


By All Means, Rome

by deirdre_c



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:38:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deirdre_c/pseuds/deirdre_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared Padalecki is an American living in Rome and writing for a celebrity gossip magazine. One night he rescues a stranger off the street who turns out to be mega-star Jensen Ackles, two-time Oscar winner and notorious recluse. Jared thinks he can trick Jensen into giving him the story of a lifetime. Will he succeed? An AU based on the classic film, Roman Holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By All Means, Rome

“Come to Papà!”

Jared performs a little victory dance in his seat as he drags the pile of chips across the table. He pictures himself in Vegas, bright lights dazzling, audience cheering, cameras rolling, the deep-voiced announcer dubbing him World Poker Champion.

Chad groans. “You are one lucky son-of-a-bitch tonight.”

Mike throws down his cards and Sandy scootches her chair back from the table with a disgusted look at the meager stack of chips she has left in front of her. “That’s it. I’m done.”

Jared raises his eyebrows, all innocence. “What can I say? Must be my night.”

He stands and wends his way through the decorating disaster of Sandy and Genevieve’s apartment—random piles of pottery shards, over-sized baroque gilded putti, a four-foot-high woven basket, delicately carved wooden cabinets and tables filling every inch of wall space—to snag another beer from the fridge. Genevieve is doing a post-doc in archeology and her collection of flea market finds from Porta Portese makes the room look like a cross between an art history museum and a garbage dump. But the girls’ place is the only one that can fit all of them for their regular Sunday ex-pat Poker Night.

Tom addresses the room at large, “So who’s working the _Storm Surge_ press conference tomorrow?”

Chad and Sandy respond simultaneously, “I am.”

Jared calls from the kitchen, “Me too.”

“I hear Jensen Ackles will actually be answering questions,” Sandy says. “I’m hoping I can get a quote from him about the rumors linking him and Scarlett.”

Tom lounges back, stretching long legs and arms in opposite directions, rolling his wrists with a series of cracks. Jared smiles into his bottle as he catches both Mike and Genevieve staring. Oblivious, Tom says, “I bet he just sits there acting bored and grouchy, like usual. The dude’s so lame. Just skates by on his looks.”

“Two Oscars says different," Sandy replies.

Jared slides back into his seat and plugs his ears. “La La La. You guys, I’m begging you. We have to deal with this shit all day. Don’t make me bring my work home.”

Mike, ignoring him, chimes in. “Guess what they’re calling that new haircut all the Hollywood starlets are sporting? ‘The Jensen.’” He even does the air quotes.

Sandy adds, “I hear he has those long blond locks insured by Lloyd’s of London.”

“I thought that was Salma Hayek’s tits?”

Chad gets a slap across the back of the head from Genevieve for his trouble. “That was Betty Grable’s legs, you perv.”

Chad doesn't know when to quit. “I’m pretty sure it’s both Ackles’ hair _and_ Salma’s tits.”

He's obviously a terrible influence because Jared, unplugging his ears—no one's heeding his pain anyway—says, “Sandy’s got better tits than Salma Hayek anyway.”

“Shut up.” Sandy rolls her eyes, but looks pleased. “What makes you an authority on tits, gaylord?”

“Hey, a guy can have a keen aesthetic appreciation, even if they’re a turn-off,” Jared retorts.

Genevieve snickers, then hauls Jared up out of his chair by the collar. “I can’t stand to see this night degenerate any further. Good night, gentlemen. And I use that term loosely.”

Mike pouts at her for a second or two with no success. “I guess this means we’re officially kicked out, guys. Wanna hit the bar?” He turns and throws his arms around both Chad’s and Tom’s shoulders. Jared’s pretty sure Chad got included in that maneuver as an excuse.

Tom shrugs a casual affirmative and Chad says, “Sure.”

But Jared says, “Naw. The money I won off you suckers tonight is going into The Fund." His friends know that he’s slowly but surely been saving for grad school, which is hard when he can barely cover the rent most months. Sometimes he wonders whether his buddies let him win on poker nights, except for the fact they’re all scraping by, too. “Besides I’ve gotta be up in just a couple hours for that press conference. And so do all y’all, Rosenbaum.”

“Eh. I can cover these things with my eyes closed.” He holds an imaginary mic up to Chad’s face and inquires breathlessly, “Director X, how would you describe your film? Visionary? Epic? Taking filmmaking to a whole new depth in the cesspool?”

The girls laugh and herd them toward the door. Mike and Chad stumble out, but Sandy manages to give Tom a squeeze and Genevieve pulls Jared down to give him a couple of quick pecks on the cheeks. “ _Ciao_ , babies. Until next week.”

When they get to the sidewalk, Jared waves over his shoulder to the guys and heads up the street towards his apartment.

***

It’s about a twenty-minute walk from Sandy and Genevieve’s, familiar enough that he doesn't have to pay attention to where he’s going, which is fortunate because that last beer is hitting him harder than he thought. Weaving a little, his feet carry him along the rough-cobbled stones of Rome. He imagines himself an Italian nobleman of yore, stealing through the dark streets to some assignation. He’s got a sword on his hip. Maybe a cloak and a feathered cap. Which would look unbelievably stupid on him all gigantic and dorky like he is, so he pretends that he’s slim and lithe with dark flashing eyes. He’d look like Milo, that guy he crushed on freshman year of college, although he didn’t actually call it a crush at the time.

Out of habit, he reaches up to touch the crumbling mortar of the archway that leads to his street, everything a moonlit-white that transforms brick into marble. Behind him rumbles the sound of a truck as it rounds the nearest traffic circle.

Up ahead, a trio of figures scuffle in the shadows. It takes Jared a second to process what he’s seeing, because actual muggings are almost unheard of in this part of the city, and this is the first one Jared’s witnessed up close. He’s walking along so quickly that he's almost on top of the scene before he manages to skid to a halt.

They’re just a couple of fucking teenagers, don’t look more than 15 or 16, and Jared can’t tell if they’re from the neighborhood or not. But their victim appears to be an American: college sweatshirt and pristine white sneakers. The guy is taking a beating, slumped against the wall, face bloody, hardly protecting himself.

Without stopping to think about it, Jared closes in with three quick strides, grabbing one attacker by the shoulder and spinning him around, ramming a fist into his stomach hard enough to double him over. The other punk turns away from the man on the ground, knife glinting in his hand. Jared doesn't hesitate, just grabs the kid’s wrist and smashes it against the wall, then kicks the weapon away when it clatters to the ground. He’s probably got at least seventy pounds on the kid and Jared uses it to spin him around and slam him up against the wall, grinding his face into the rough brick for good measure. Not enough to really hurt, just enough to get the creep’s attention.

In Italian, Jared growls, “Take your friend and get the fuck out of here. If I ever see you again, I’ll send you to the hospital in pieces.”

“ _Sì, sì,_ ” the punk babbles, nodding furiously. Jared lets go and immediately he runs, his partner staggering along behind him.

Jared puts a hand on the brick to steady himself. It’s so dark there in the shadows he has to bend down to check to see if their victim’s all right and then he simply… plops down on his ass. _What the hell just happened?_ he wonders.

He peers over at the stranger, who’s on the ground too, leaning his temple woozily against the wall, blood trickling down his face from a cut over one eye.

“A knife.” Jared gulps. “They had a fucking _knife_!”

“Dude,” the guy deadpans. “It's like you’re Batman.”

He starts giggling and it’s contagious which means Jared can’t help but throw his head back and cackle out his relief and excess adrenaline. He catches his breath and goes to help the guy up. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“No.” The dude’s head is lolling around like he’s about five tequila shots past full-on drunk, but the denial is firm. “No hospitals. Jus’… jus’… point me toward a men’s room or something and I’ll clean m’self up.” He rubs a hand across his face and then draws his forearm across it, smearing blood all over the damn place.

“Sorry, but where do you think you are, Disneyland?” Jared says. “There’s no public restroom around here! Especially not this time of night.”

The guy leans over to scoop up a battered Rangers baseball cap that must’ve been knocked off him during the attack. He teeters and nearly keels over. Jared grabs for him, still buzzed and not exactly steady himself, catches him by the arm and hitches him up on his shoulder, shooting a prayer up to heaven that the Good Samaritan story wasn’t the punchline of a cosmic joke. “C’mon. My place is right up this way.”

Jared’s apartment is in the next building. The front gate is nine tall feet of iron and scratched in a thousand places, as if wild dogs have been trying to break into the courtyard. His key unlocks the right-hand side and it swings open with a tiny shriek of old metal. Inside, Jared push-pulls his burden up the four open-air flights of thick, worn concrete stairs.

Fumbling one-handed with the apartment key, he lurches as the guy leans heavily against his back, ungainly, resting his cheek against Jared’s shoulder blade, probably bleeding all over, and this is one of Jared’s nicer shirts.

“Come on now, you can’t be drunk as all that.”

Jared’s stray mumbles out a response, almost to himself, “Not drunk at all. Just—,” and his voice turns sing-song, “—verrrrry happy.”

The slur is thick and warm, and Jared half-smiles, recalling plenty of his own “happy” nights out. Jared throws the door open wide and hits the light switch with an elbow as he lugs his guest inside.

The guy pulls himself upright and peers around, blinking owlishly in surprise. “’Sa shoebox!”

Jared tries to look at his place with fresh eyes. It’s indeed tiny; his landlady once told him that all the apartment units in the building were converted from individual rooms in an old hotel, which means only about 250 square feet worth of living space. Jared also realizes that he may possibly be hoarding too much stuff to be contained in 250 square feet.

He shrugs. “Well, yeah, I guess it is pretty damn small. But I was just psyched to find a place of my own in the _centro storico_ , ya know? And I don’t have to share a bathroom and I’ve got this cool little kitchen, which is more than I can say for Mike and Tom’s place. God, you couldn’t pay me to live there.” Jared wonders why he feels the need to defend his apartment to his uninvited guest.

As he tapers off, the guy stumbles into the apartment, tripping over running shoes at the doorway and, immediately after, a small pile clothes Jared had left on the floor that morning. “’Sa pigsty, too,” he grouses, glaring over his shoulder at the offending laundry.

“Hey!” Jared protests. “I happen to know a great patch of sidewalk downstairs with your name on it.”

The guy smirks at the threat. “L-lovely place. Very cozy.” Like a marionette with cut strings, he flops down on the queen-sized Murphy bed that’s still pulled down from the wall after last night, sheets and blankets in a ball at the foot. It takes up most of the free floor space in the apartment when it’s down, but there’s no way Jared would be able to sleep on anything smaller.

“Damn straight it is.” Jared heads toward the bathroom to fetch the first aid kit. “Don’t you dare pass out there. That’s _my_ bed. You can have the couch. C-O-U-C-H.”

Well, it’s more of a love seat. Or is it a divan? Pretty much it’s just a glorified chair. But Jared figures this beggar can’t be a chooser.

It takes him a second to remember what he’s in the bathroom for, swaying a little in front of the mirror, but then, oh yeah, he returns with a washcloth and some bandaids. The guy’s still slouched right where Jared left him, trying to staunch the wound over his eye with the hem of his crimson Sooners sweatshirt. Jared tugs the shirttail out of his hand and replaces it with the washcloth, watching him smear it around his face.

“Are you from Oklahoma, man?” Jared indicates the school logo.

“Nope, Texas born and bred.” Then he gazes up at Jared, a blissful look in the one uncovered eye. “Hey, you’re American, too!”

“Acute observation,” Jared says wryly. “Also from Texas, actually.”

“Awesome, pardner.” He laughs, throaty and warm.

Jared snorts in return at the guy’s exaggerated accent. Then he tears an oversize bandage out of its package and presses it to where the guy’s eyebrow is split. Jared limits himself to the slow movements of someone just drunk enough to know he needs to be careful. As he suspected, the injury’s really not too bad, already slowing to an ooze.

"Take that sweatshirt off,” Jared orders. “Jeans too, they’re a mess. I don’t want that shit all over the place.” Between the blood and some kind of mud or puddle or urban sludge the guy landed in down in the alleyway, he’s pretty disgusting. “I don’t think the cut’s that bad, you’re just bleeding like a motherfucker."

“Gotta be the best at everything,” the guy mumbles as he struggles to get the shirt over his head, getting lost inside somewhere, knotting his arms. He’s stuck half-in, half-out and Jared has to give him a hand.

Underneath he’s wearing a simple grey t-shirt, but it's tight enough to cling to some impressive shoulders and what looks like a gorgeous chest. Jared had gotten a sense that the guy was nicely built when he was hauling him up the stairs, but he kind of wishes he didn’t have this much confirmation, given the complete inappropriateness of lusting after his little rescue project. Jared’s mind suddenly feels the inconvenient need to calculate exactly how many hours it’s been since he got off in the shower yesterday morning.

He turns away, yanks open a drawer in the dresser, and hands the guy a pair of sweats. He doesn’t want to spend the whole night thinking about his visitor passed out in only his underwear a few feet away.

Of course, the guy takes that very moment to lean back on his elbows. "Help me into them?"

Jared throws up his hands in frustration. Now that he’s noticed, he can’t help staring at the guy’s amazing body—flat stomach, slim hips, toned thighs, the way his cock is framed by the jeans when he’s stretched out like that—but the fact that he’s both stoned drunk and bleeding helps to bring Jared’s sense of chivalry to the fore. Jared reaches out and carefully undoes the top button of the guy’s jeans. "There you are. That’s all I’m helping. Put one leg in here, put the other leg here. Pull them up. I'm going to…to… get you a glass of water."

He retreats once more into the bathroom, and comes back with the water to find the guy changed into the sweats, still seated on the edge of the bed. Jared goes to hand him the glass, but he slumps forward and suddenly he’s leaning into Jared, a solid weight, mumbling into Jared’s belly, “You’re really nice, you know?”

Jared lets himself fantasize for a second that the guy’s a hooker, some charge-by-the-hour rentboy. That he’d been out turning tricks all night before one of his johns decided to get rough, but then Jared showed up and rescued him from squalor and degradation and a life of selling himself. That he’s so thankful he decides to slither off the bed and onto his knees and show Jared just what a professional can do.

Of course, Jared has to admit that he doesn’t believe most streetwalkers in Rome dress in XL college sweatshirts and New Balance tennis shoes to drum up business.

He clears his throat, gently pushing the guy back and stepping away. “Where’re you staying?”

“Mmmm, I dunno. Some hotel. Pretty sure, can’t remember. Walked a long way.” His eyes are dull and blurry and he’s looking around like a yellow-brick path back to his hotel is going to wink to life just behind him.

“Check your wallet,” Jared suggests.

“Those assholes got my wallet.”

 _Drunk and broke,_ Jared thinks. _Great._ Jared asks himself why he’s doing this. What does he owe this stranger? Probably gonna want coffee tomorrow. Probably going to kill Jared in his sleep for the €150 in the dresser drawer and his iPod. Probably end up choking on his own vomit and Jared will have a dead body on his hands. But even as Jared lists the reasons this is a bad idea, he acknowledges that he’d never throw someone out on the street. “Dude, what’s your name anyway?”

The guy slurs something that sounds like “Jason” and then slumps over. Jared stares for a second or two, then tries to pull him up off the bed to move him, but he’s a dead weight. And it’s as if the guy passing out has sapped all of Jared’s remaining energy and sobriety, too, because for no good reason he thinks, _fuck it,_ and curls up on the couch.

***

When the sun hits Jared's eyes, he realizes he’s in trouble. He’s not sure what kind of trouble it is, but it can’t be good.

Normally, Jared’s a morning person, and his alarm is set to wake him up early, even—especially—after a night of poker and booze, in order to get some of his own writing done and a run in before whatever work is scheduled for that day. That time is _always_ before full daylight has the chance to brighten the room.

He sits up and groans at the excruciating crick in his neck. It’s then that Jared’s hungover brain comes online. He leaps off of the couch, praying that there’s still enough time to make the _Storm Surge_ press conference, but he doubts that. Highly, highly doubts it, as he hears one of the local churches’ carillons chime ten.

He glances frantically around and sees a motionless, man-sized lump in his bed. He’s momentarily stunned and confused, shocked at the possibility that he brought home a hookup. Then last night’s events all rush back over him and he’s hit by the urgent need to get rid of the guy, get himself changed, and get gone. His iPhone rings and Jared groans again.

He fumbles in his pocket—he’d slept in his clothes, for Christ’s sake—and hits Talk. “ _Pronto?_ ” he croaks.

“How’d it go?” It’s Sera Gambini, his boss at the magazine, voice like a scalpel. Jared glances over toward the bed, frowning. He slips out onto the landing, edging the door almost shut behind him. There’s a little white handwritten note taped to the door—another gentle warning from his landlady about late rent— which he absently tears down and shoves into his pocket.

“Fine, fine. Got some super quotes.” Jared sends up new prayers that he can bribe Tom or Chad by promising to withhold sexual favors so that they’ll give him a recording of the thing.

“You did? Really? I doubt it.” Sera’s voice shoots up an octave. “Because it was postponed!”

Jared winces, holding the phone away from his ear. “Oh.” Wow, that went south faster than he’d anticipated.

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ It turns out Ackles came down sick and bailed. They rescheduled for tomorrow. You’d better be there, I’m serious.”

“Wait a minute.” Jared pauses in thought, then looks over his shoulder at the apartment door. He vaguely hears Sera trying to get his attention-- _Jared? Are you there?_ \-- but it fades into the background as he tries to sharpen his memory of blurry events from the previous night. Finally, he replies, “Did you say Ackles was sick?”

“Yes, _fessacchione_. That’s why the conference. Was. Postponed. Christ, Jared, sober up and get a story for me tomorrow. Otherwise, I don’t care if you are my best writer, I will kick your ass to the curb.”

Jared’s still only half listening, boggled by this strange notion, this possible secret-identity of his accidental guest. He blurts out, “How much would a private, exclusive interview with Ackles be worth to you?”

Sera scoffs. “No one gets a private interview with Jensen Ackles, Padalecki. No one. I don’t think he’s given one since the ‘Jenneel’ breakup after the _Ten Inch Hero_ debacle.”

“How much? Hypothetically?”

“Depends on how juicy the details are, but I can imagine the magazine paying seventy-five grand for something like that. Up to a hundred if there were some useable pictures, too. None of the paps can even get pictures of the guy coming out of the grocery store. But that’s the kind of money I’d offer _if_ an interview actually took place. _Which_ it would not.”

Jared tries to wrap his mind around the idea of a hundred thousand euros. Forget worrying about the rent—he could move back home, pay off his undergrad loans, start grad school.

“Don’t plan on firing me yet, Sera,” he mutters into the phone. “I may have a something big for you tomorrow.” Jared doesn’t even say goodbye, just punches End and thumps his head back against the wall.

***

When he steps back into the apartment, the stranger is still asleep, now sprawled diagonally across the whole bed, blanket flung off, one arm stretched out with fingers loosely curled across an empty palm. Morning sunlight bathes the back of his legs.

Jared sneaks around the edge of the mattress to get a good look at the guy’s face. _Holy shit, it’s Jensen Ackles. In my goddamn fucking bed._

Jared can’t help staring at his hair. His hair. Ackles cut _his hair_! No wonder Jared hadn’t recognized him—aside from the fact that, you know, who expects a drunken Jensen Ackles to show up on your doorstep at two in the morning?—because now his hair is practically a buzz-cut, an inch at its longest and dark brown instead of the streaked-blond mane he was so renowned for.

Jared, doesn’t even think about it, just pulls out his phone again—thank goodness the magazine pays for him to have one-- and takes a picture of Jensen Ackles sleeping in his bed.

 _Click_.

Jared feels the kind of surreal calm in the face of absurdity that usually only comes in dreams. All he needs is a plan. He could get a once-in-a-lifetime interview. He really, really needs it. But the minute Jensen wakes up, he’s going to run away from Jared Padalecki, columnist for _OK Italy_ , like a tiger with its tail on fire. Jensen hardly speaks to the press; getting a “no comment” from him is two words more than most reporters manage on a good day.

Jared realizes the only way he’s going to get Jensen to talk is if it’s _not_ an interview. Perhaps he can fool Jensen into thinking he’s just some random guy. Perhaps they hang out, get some breakfast, chat, casual-like, they hit it off, Jensen decides that Jared should be his official biographer, Jared goes on to write a Pulitzer Prize winning, _New York Times_ bestseller about Jensen’s sensational secret life as a spy for the CIA.

Jared realizes that it’s one of his typical flights of fancy. It’s just that this time—at the core of it—there’s the foundation of a path to success. He starts to rush around the room, scrambling to throw out all of the papers and magazines lying around the apartment, scooping up photos and ticket stubs, anything that might offer a hint that the occupant knows the first thing about pop culture.

He gives a brief thought to journalistic integrity. Despite the fact that he doesn’t respect his so-called magazine or the genre in which he currently writes even a tiny bit, he’s damn good at it and for the past year has stuck to the most rigorous standards he could: limitation of harm, truthfulness, accuracy, steering clear of libel.

However, Jared has also found that celebrities often bring trouble upon themselves by generally being enormous asshats, with Jensen Ackles topping lots of people’s lists of the most aloof and pretentious. The celebrity press was rife with stories of having to jump through hoops for an interview with Jensen only to have it abruptly cancelled or how he’d just never show, of him storming off of photo shoots, of him barricaded in his trailer on movie sets. Just last year Tom was working the red carpet at Cannes and Jensen stalked right past him without a word.

He looks over at Jensen’s sleeping form and grimaces. It’s a sucky thing to do, to trick someone, trap them. But it’s a cold, cold world, and Jared has adjusted to that. It’s even colder if one is only a few euros away from being evicted.

Once he’s satisfied that he’s scoured the apartment for incriminating evidence, Jared throws himself into the bathroom and strips, showering faster than he ever has in his life. Hair. Pits. Crotch. Rinse. He towels off and shakes the water out of his hair like a dog, then throws on boxers and jeans. He realizes he forget to grab a shirt, so he gambles that Jensen’s still out cold and sneaks out into the room.

As luck would have it, Jensen Ackles is awake, lying in Jared’s bed staring up at the ceiling, hands scrubbing through his short hair. He sits up abruptly when Jared appears. His eyes widen briefly in surprise, then he shutters his expression, trades it for a mask of bland cynicism, eyebrows raised in judgment, as if Jared didn’t have a right to walk around however he liked in his own home.

Jared quickly snags a shirt from the nearby laundry hamper and goes for casual—just a normal day of chatting with the homeless, bruised-up stranger in his apartment—as he says, “Hey, man. You said it was ‘Jason’ last night, right?”

Jared has a reputation for being a terrible liar—which makes this plan pretty stupid from the get-go, when you think about it—so he throws the shirt over his head to hide his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m Jason. Who are you? Where am I?” On the other hand, Jensen Ackles can lie with the best of them. Not a blink at the weirdness of his surroundings. Just like that, he’s got a new name and he’s on the offensive.

Jared says, “This is my apartment.”

“And exactly how did I get here?” It doesn’t come out anxious or accusatory, just a matter-of-fact question. Jared’s impressed at how Jensen can cover, can present a calm and contained demeanor in such a very odd situation. Jared knows if it were him, waking up with a stranger in a strange place, he’d be freaking out. He wonders what Jensen is thinking under that curtain across his features.

“Pretty sure you walked. Until you got jumped by a couple of thieves in the street outside, that is.”

Jensen reaches up and feels the bandage over his eye, wincing. “And you are—?"

"Jared, Jared Padalecki," he offers. _Nice_ , Jared thinks, mentally kicking himself. He hasn't the faintest idea why he'd just given Jensen his real name, but it had come out all the same. It’s a long shot that Jensen would recognize the name of a two-bit tabloid journalist here in Europe, but you never know. Biting his cheek nervously, Jared waits for a reply.

Jensen breaks into a smile, warm and almost friendly, and Jared can’t figure out how the guy, battered and bedraggled, can manage to look twice as gorgeous in person as he does on a 50-foot screen. "Thanks, Jared. I’m not sure I remember everything exactly, but I’m pretty sure you saved my ass.”

Jared, appalled to find himself actually blushing like some star-struck preteen girl, turns toward the kitchen. Really it’s just a little galley in the corner, barely larger than the width of Jared’s armspan. Two-burner stove, a few pots and a skillet hang from a rack overhead; mismatched plates and thick, tiny glasses are stacked on open shelves next to pots of herbs and heaps of random utensils and a couple of empty wine bottles.

“No problem. Glad I could be of help.” Jared putters around for a minute then asks, “Cappuccino or coffee?”

“Coffee?” Jensen sounds desperate. Jared imagines that, between the hangover and the blow to the head, Jensen’s got a pretty wicked headache going, if Jared’s own is anything to go by. “God, yes, coffee. Black. Please.”

Jared’s glad he didn’t buy whole bean this week, thinks neither he nor Jensen could stand the sound of the grinder right now. He starts some water heating for the press, then turns his attention back to his quarry. “So, Jason, you got a last name?”

“Yeah. It’s Ross,” he responds easily.

Jensen’s famous enough and Jared’s been in the business long enough to recognize the guy’s middle name. _Damn, he’s good._ Jared has to hide a smile. “So what happened last night? Out on a bender?”

“No. Well… sort of, but accidentally.”

“Yeah?” Jared asks, trying to sound noncommittal, like he’s just asking to be polite, not that he’s dying to take verbatim notes on every detail.

“I’m, uh, just here in Rome on business. Was out drinking with some colleagues.” Jensen stops for a second, pinches the bridge of his nose and says ruefully, “I think someone slipped me something.”

“What?” Jared asks, shocked. “You mean you were _roofied_?” And he thinks that his €100,000 could be made on this story alone: _Jensen Ackles Date Rape Near Miss!_ Holy cow, his plan is really working. Given Jensen’s reputation for reserve, Jared had expected to have to extract information like pulling teeth, but he’s being miraculously forthcoming. “Damn, man. How in the world did that go down?”

“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. We were in the hotel bar, I was nursing a drink and trying to avoid small talk while at the same time trying to avoid looking like a stuck-up, antisocial bastard.” He turns up the corner of his mouth and Jared can’t help but nod… and hope Jensen can’t read minds. “Guess I wasn’t succeeding. I remember someone telling me that I needed to ‘loosen up.’ Or something.” At that, Jensen pauses and frowns, rubs at the back of his neck, then he hurries to sum up, “And then I started feeling strange and got out of there, but once out on the street, I got all turned around and I walked for hours and I think maybe I did some really weird stuff.” He runs a hand through his hair again.

“Weird like ‘new tattoo’ weird?” Jared asks.

Jensen’s eyes widen with panic, but Jared laughs and reassures him. “I’m kidding! You’d be feeling it sore as hell if you’d gone and got yourself a tattoo.”

“Man, I don’t know. I’m sore all over.” He presses a hand to his ribs and groans, then flops back on the bed.

Jared is a bit shocked; he expected that a one-name celeb like Jensen would’ve gone running for a mirror the minute he woke up, check on his moneymaker, freak out about the cut on his face. But Jensen’s just… calm? Normal? Jared shakes his head and walks over with a cup of coffee in one hand, a couple of ibuprofen in the other.

Jensen accepts them and tosses back the pills, then takes a sip of coffee, groaning this time with pleasure. “So what do you do, Jared? Besides saving people.”

Jared feels himself blush again at the compliment, but now it’s welcome because it acts as cover for a little prevarication. “I’m, um, an author. Fiction, mostly.”

Which is true, to a certain extent. When Jared had come to Rome almost two years ago, straight out of college, he’d planned to sit in a garret and hammer out the next Great Novel. One month in, he discovered he liked eating too much to play the starving artist and gotten the job with _OK Italy_. But he’s also managed to sell some freelance stuff—short stories, poetry—on the side and he _does_ hope to make a career of that some day. So it isn’t a complete falsehood.

Jensen’s eyes roam over the apartment. He gingerly stands up and wanders over to look out the tiny window's view of the city. "It must be fun to live in a place like this."

"Yeah, it’s pretty fantastic. I mean, I get really wrapped up in the history and architecture, but I don’t keep up much with the current styles, you know, fashion, fads, all that stuff." If Jared can just convince Jensen that he’s out of the loop, as far from paparazzi as the sun from Pluto, Jensen’ll reveal all kinds of secrets. At least that what Jared hopes. All it’ll take is trust.

Never taking his eyes from the view, Jensen says, “I travel to dozens of cities every year for work, and I never really get to get to know any of them. Only the insides of hotel rooms and private cars and over and over the same parties with the same people—" He cuts himself off. “So, what’s Rome like?”

"Why don't you check it out for yourself?" Jared suggests a little too eagerly. _Back off, idiot_.

"Well—" Jensen seems to ponder the offer. “I’m already missing–in-action, aren’t I?" Jensen turns to look at him hopefully. It’s as if he’s asking Jared for permission, for reassurance. “What happens in Rome, stays in Rome?”

Jared had always found that movie stars on a whole were a bunch of narcissistic assholes who weren't interested in anything but themselves and their headlines and their diets and their skin tone. He recalls Ryan Gosling ignoring him to talk on the phone with his publicist for the first twenty-five minutes of a thirty minute interview, and the time Miley Cyrus refused to look him in the eye and sent him to fetch her three different kinds of bottled water. This guy, though. He’s not getting that vibe from him at all. Jared’s intrigued by the disconnect between Jensen-Ackles-the-star and the Jensen he’s seen so far this morning. Which one is real? What’s Jensen really like? Would Jensen like Jared if he got to know him?

Then he shrugs off the speculation, needs to focus on this plan. Sera’s always complaining that Jared needs to be tougher, so he strives for tough.

"Live dangerously," Jared tempts. "Take the whole day."

Jensen turns to the window again, takes another drink from his coffee. "I could do some of the things I've always wanted to," he admits.

"Like what?"

"Oh, it’s pretty boring, you’ll think I’m a weirdo. It’s just I—I'd do just whatever I liked all day long. Walk around. Eat at restaurants. See the city like a normal person." He flinches slightly when he says the word “normal.”

Jared hums an encouragement and then pretends to look thoughtful. "You know what? There's no reason you shouldn’t do all of those things. I mean, why not? Maybe I could go with you to show you around?"

Jensen raises his eyebrows skeptically and winces at the stretch against the bandaid, putting a hand to his forehead. "You would? But don't you have to work?"

"Um,” Jared casts about for an excuse. “I’m actually waiting around for my editor to email me with revisions to the latest chapter of my novel.” Jared blurts it out, but then realizes that checking his email will be a great pretext for getting his phone out to take covert pictures. All day, all around the city. “In the meantime, today could be a holiday!"

Jensen still looks doubtful, despite Jared’s redoubled attempt to appear completely innocent. "You want to spend your day off walking around with me?"

“Why not, Jason?” Jared says, emphasizing the alias. “Rome is amazing, I never get tired of it. Besides, this novel I’m working on, it’s, ah, set here in Rome. Playing tour guide gives me a chance to do some more research on locales.”

“Well. Okay. I, uh… I should probably—” Jensen picks up his sweatshirt from the floor where it had been unceremoniously tossed the night before. Both it and his jeans are ruined, bloody and muddy and torn. He’s still in his tee and the sweats that Jared had loaned him the night before. He looks boyish and flustered and approachable and suddenly Jared has a vivid fantasy of striding over, tumbling Jensen back down on the bed and pushing up his the shirt, sliding the soft cotton down over his hips and…

Jared gives a little cough, fairly ashamed of himself, because he’s already exploiting the guy enough, thank you very much. He says, “Too bad about your sweatshirt.”

“Eh, no loss. It was a gag gift from my buddy, Chris. I’m a Longhorns fan all the way.”

“Really? UT? My brother went there. We’re from San Antone.”

Jensen grins. “Cool. I’m from Dallas.” Of course Jared knew that. _Richardson, actually_ , his brain supplies. But it’s nice to know Jensen’s not lying about everything. _Not like I am._

“What do you say to breakfast?” Jared quickly changes the subject. “I need more sustenance than this,” holding up his nearly-empty mug. “But first, we gotta find you something to wear other than sweats. And those aren’t really cutting it either.” He points to Jensen’s tennis shoes on the floor.

“What?”

“Shoes like that, it’s as if you’re wearing a flashing neon sign: ‘I’m an American!’ Don’t you want to blend in?”

“Apparently I’m going to be walking around with a seven-foot, cornfed giant.” Jensen looks him up and down. “How do _you_ plan to blend?”

“Dude! I’m practically a native,” Jared says. “I swear to you, clothes make the man. We can go see a guy I know. He’s got this second-hand shop and we can get you some clothes that fit there.”

“I can’t buy any clothes, I don’t have any money. Wallet’s gone,” Jensen reminds him.

It takes Jared only a second to weigh the cost-benefit of keeping this scheme on track. His supply of cash is pretty meager, to say the least, but the promise of Sera’s huge bonus lures him recklessly on. “Well, I’m not exactly rolling in dough, but I also am the undisputed king of finding bargains in the city. How about this: I front you some money and you pay me back once you’re back at your hotel?”

“How am I going to find you to pay you back?” Jensen asks. Then he reaches out, motioning with his hand. “Here. Gimme your phone.”

Jared puts his palm over his back pocket, gripping it tight like Jensen’s going to snatch the phone out and from it deduce Jared’s true identity. “Why?”

“I’ll give you my cell number, and then when I have my own phone back, you can contact me and I can send you what I owe.”

 _Jensen Ackles’ private phone number. Jesus Christ._ A quick glance at the phone assures him there’s nothing incriminating on the screen, so he hands it over. He watches Jensen cup it in his strong, square hands, his tongue peeking out from between his teeth as he enters the string of numbers, and, wow, he really needs to stop being so sexy and start being the jerk Jared assumed he was less than an hour ago.

Jared gets Jensen up and moving with the promise of more coffee with breakfast. He slips his entire emergency supply of cash out of the dresser and into his pocket, then locks up and they descend the chiseled stairs, through the gate, and out to the narrow sidewalk. Along Jared’s street, apartment buildings loom above shops, hundreds of balconies crammed with geraniums, hydrangea, and _bucanville_. It’s mid-morning and the neighborhood is bustling, but not crowded.

Before they go to a caffè, he’s determined to get Jensen out of such a conspicuous outfit and into something that will help him stay anonymous. The hair helps, sure, but if Jensen starts attracting a horde of fans, Jared’s plan to get him to expose the “real” Jensen for all of _OK Italy_ ’s readers will be ruined. _Good luck with that_ , he thinks, glancing sidelong at Jensen’s remarkable profile where he has it ducked down, turned slightly toward Jared, hiding in plain view.

Jared can’t understand how he overlooked it for one second.

Jared leads them just around the corner a few blocks to his favorite resale clothing store. It’s pretty tough finding inexpensive clothes in Rome when you’re Jared’s height and breadth, but he’d found an ally in the proprietor, Giacomo, who constantly manages to ferret out well-made, fashionable, cheap clothes big enough for Jared. Honestly, he’s kind of a miracle worker.

Giacomo’s shop hides down below street-level, a discreet little oval sign pointing the way down some steep stairs, damp and cramped. As they walk through the door, a bell tinkles overhead. Giacomo himself bustles out, a lean, leather-skinned old man with white hair and wide, watery eyes; every seam and wrinkle on his face carves a bit deeper as he grins wide and welcoming at Jared. “ _Buon giorno! Buon giorno, amico mio._ "

Jared smiles back, clasping both of the man’s small hands in his own to shake in greeting. “ _Buon giorno, Papi._ ” Jared wasn’t sure when, but at some point, Giacomo had informally adopted him.

Jared turns briefly to Jensen, who’s looking around uncertainly at the jumbled, overflowing bins and racks of men’s clothing: suits of mismatched coats and pants, messy piles of jeans, boxes full of belts mixed with shoes and hats. He can’t imagine Jensen Ackles ever deigning to shop in a place like this.

“So,” Jared says to him, “They don’t really speak English here, but I promise it’ll be all good.”

Jared turns back to Giacomo and explains that his friend, indicating Jensen, needs new pants and shirt and shoes, everything, to look more Italian, less _turista_.

 _“Non c’è problema, come volete._ ” Giacomo looks Jensen swiftly up and down, judging for size, then snaps his fingers and disappears into the back. He immediately pops back in and waves for Jensen to follow.

Jared shoos him along. “Go on. There’s a changing room back there. Try some things on.”

“Dude, seriously?”

“Hey,” Jared continues. “If you want to wear the sweatpants around all day, be my guest.”

Jensen grimaces, shrugs, and heads to the back of the shop.

Jared follows after a second and plants himself on a little bench right outside the dressing room. He thinks that, if this were one of Jensen’s films, this is where there’d be a musical montage of Jensen popping out from behind the dressing room curtain in outfit after outfit, twirling around for Jared’s nods of approval. There’d be one with tight jeans, another with a Henley and suspenders, maybe a fútbol uniform complete with shin guards, definitely a tux. Oh, and a kilt.

Jared pulls out his phone.

Not five minutes later, Jensen emerges wearing an expression that’s a mixture of surprised and pleased. He has on a pair of black slacks that fit him perfectly—not that Jared’s staring at the way they flatter Jensen’s ass or anything—and a plain but gorgeous soft gray button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves with a black undershirt peeking out at the neck. Giacomo even found him some sleek leather slip-on shoes that hopefully fit well enough for walking.

Jared doesn’t look up right away, pretends to be reading something on his phone.

 _Click._

He catches Jensen looking in the mirror, eyes wide, as he runs his hands through his shorn hair, touches the bandage over his right eye. Jared notices he’s wearing a couple of worn black thongs around one wrist, and he wonders if they have some significance or if Jensen just affects them for kicks.

“Wow, Jason,” Jared says. “You look great! I’d never have guessed you’d clean up so well.” He makes it obvious it’s a joke so that Jensen won’t think he’s hitting on him, or worse, that he’s recognized him, but in fact, Jensen does indeed look simply amazing.

“You’ll need these, too.” He snags a pair of sunglasses out of a nearby bin and tosses them to Jensen, who snatches them out of the air. “Easiest way to get tagged as a tourist?” Jared continues, " _Not_ wearing sunglasses.”

“Okay, yeah.” Jensen says with a small, sweet smile. “Thanks.”

Giacomo brings out the sweats and tee Jensen had left behind, folded neatly with the sneakers set on top. He adds up the total on an old-time register that jangles and shakes when the cash drawer pops out. Jared slowly pulls out his wallet, feeling a little queasy when he sees the total. As inexpensive as Giacomo’s second-hand stock is, Jensen’s outfit still adds up to a pretty big chunk of change.

Giacomo clears his throat and offers, “Jared, why don’t you pay half now and half later?”

“Really?” Jared gives a hopeful smile. “I would appreciate it so much.”

He hands over the adjusted amount and as Giacomo takes it, he nods toward Jensen. “That’s a nice boy. Polite. You should keep him, _ragazzo_.”

Polite. It’s not the first adjective Jared would have thought to describe Jensen Ackles. Jared shoots a worried look over his shoulder, even though he knows Jensen can’t follow the Italian, and stutters, “It’s… it’s not really like that.” But before he can come up with a plausible alternative explanation, a pair of four-year-old girls wander in. They’re Giacomo’s granddaughters, twins with matching glossy black ponytails and round little chins, identical except for Teresa’s pierced ears. They see Jared and squeal in unison, running to him. He picks one up in each arm.

 _”Buon giorno, bambine,_ ” Jared says, and gives them both a kiss on each cheek. He asks, “Where is Alessandro?”

“Out back,” Elena tells him. “We’ll go get him.” They run out.

Less than a minute later an older boy runs in and stands before Jared. As he’s done many times before, Jared crouches down and pulls out a euro coin, hands it to the boy along with the stack of borrowed clothes and shoes.

“ _Per favore_ , run these up to my apartment, leave them in the woodbox for me?”

Jared’s place, like many others, has storage outside the door, a left-over tradition from when homes were heated with stoves. He wouldn’t necessarily leave anything really valuable there, but he’s never had any trouble when packages and other little items were left in there for a few hours.

“ _Si, signore._ ”

“ _Grazie._ ”

The girls hop and tug at his shirt, begging, “Can we go, too?”

Jared sets a hand atop each of their heads. “No, _piccole mie_. You’re still too young. Next time, maybe.”

Over the girls’ loud protests, Jared thanks Giacomo again for his help and leads a quiet Jensen back out into the daylight and up the stairs to the street. Jensen dons the sunglasses and ducks his head, much like he’d done on the way here. Jared finds himself a bit nervous at Jensen’s silence, despite the fact that he’s not a chatty guy. Did Jared give himself away somehow? Is Jensen about to ditch him?

“So, how about I show you around a bit?”

Jensen asks, “Don’t you have something better to do?”

Jared was expecting it to come out sarcastic or annoyed, but he swears Jensen sounds a little forlorn. Perhaps Jensen wants him to stick around after all.

“Well, my other choices are to sleep or sit staring at my phone waiting for my email. Oh, or I could spend the day cleaning up my ‘pigsty.’”

“Ouch. Did I really say that last night?” Jensen says, contrite. “I meant to say ‘nest.’ Or maybe ‘burrow.’ Den? Lair?”

It startles a laugh out of Jared and he takes a fake swipe at Jensen, like he would a friend who was giving him shit. This is going way better than Jared would have anticipated. Heck, might even be fun.

“Do what you want, man. I’m going to get breakfast. If I don’t get some sustenance in me soon, I may perish.” He baits the hook. “And, once again, I’m buying.”

***

They stop for breakfast at a little caffè with outdoor seating, the sunshine and the light breeze filtering through the overhanging umbrella pine helping to soothe away the last of Jared’s hangover. Jared makes Jensen have cappuccino and cornetto because that’s what good Romans do, even if he orders both of them three pastries each instead of one. The waiter—who’s charming and great at his job and once asked Jared out, but never seemed to hold it against him when Jared turned him down— _tsk tsks_ at him as he turns away with the order, and Jared has to explain to Jensen that he’s usually given a lot of grief here about the size of his appetite. “But, honestly, one just isn’t enough for a growing boy like me. If we’re going to be doing some serious walking today, I need some fuel.”

They sit for a while, working their way through the cornetti, drinking more cappuccino, casually people-watching. Jared gets Jensen to wax nostalgic with him about gigantic American breakfasts piled high with fluffy eggs and flapjacks and bacon as thick as your thumb. Finally, Jared leans back in the slender wrought-iron chair, testing its give. "So, what do you do for a living, Je- Jason?"

Jensen looks at him over the rim of his cup. "I’m in public relations."

That’s not exactly untrue, Jared concedes. “Do you like it?” He eases a comfortable smile on, waiting for Jensen to finally clam up or revert to his infamous self-important Hollywood demeanor.

“I hate it, actually.”

Jared sits up straight. “Wow, really? I wasn’t— I mean, that’s… too bad. Ever thought of quitting? Trying something else?”

“Every day. But they throw money at you and it’s hard to walk away, you know?”

Jared barks a laugh. “Not really. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck since college.”

“Oh. Sorry. Yeah, that was stupid of me.” Jensen looks sideways at him. “I guess I’m a bit jealous of the European-capital, bohemian lifestyle you’ve got going on here. A day off to hang out and drink coffee feels like the height of decadence to me.”

Jared feels like he ought to push on with this line of questioning—or conversation, whatever—but anyone paying close attention would notice that Jensen’s shoulders are a bit slumped and his expression’s just a bit miserable. Jared decides that, as intriguing as Jensen’s claim about acting is, Jared can follow up on it later.

"Who says we’re hanging out? We’re on a mission today, so let’s roll. What would you like to see first?” Jared asks. “We could go to the Vatican? It's pretty much numero uno on every American tourist's to-do list."

"I’m not sure I need to see the Vatican. Too... busy."

"Okay then. Nope to the Pope."

It’s logical but regrettable that Jensen wants to avoid heavily trafficked places. Jared thinks the Vatican is astonishing every time he goes, which is embarrassingly often for a guy who is starting to think of himself as a local. The throngs of people are a hassle, true, but the art and architecture and sheer scope are a wonder. He'd hoped to stand with Jensen under the index finger of God in the Sistine Chapel, imagined himself accidentally brushing his own fingers across Jensen's. He imagined there’d be electricity between them, crackling, spitting, and that Jensen, too, would feel the spark leap that small gap. Which was stupid because… well, Jensen was Jensen Ackles and Jared was no one. Specifically, a no one who needed to steal a story.

“Well, unfortunately, a lot of the museums and historical sites are closed on Mondays,” he says.

“I’m not really the museum type. I’m seriously allergic to crowds.”

 _I bet,_ Jared thinks. _Too much chance of getting recognized._

“Besides,” Jensen continues, “I’d rather visit things off the beaten path. Stuff not everyone gets to see. Just stroll around, you know?”

“Okay, then let’s stay away from the Corso. And Via Condotti. They’re just a big mass of shoppers and sight-seers.” And again, places where Jensen’s most likely to be noticed, even with the haircut and sunglasses. “Oh wait! I have an idea.”

He quickly pays the waiter for breakfast and the two of them start off down the sidewalk. As they make their way, Jared initiates his “private interview,” casually asking a question about Jensen’s taste in music. But he gets lost in the conversation as talk of music quickly leads past a story about Jensen’s feeble attempts at playing guitar to blues music and John Lee Hooker, to Detroit and Tigers baseball, then somehow to Henry Ford’s assembly line innovations, vintage car collecting, then Mario Kart, then old Atari games like Frogger and Joust.

It turns out talking with Jensen is like surfing Wikipedia.

As the conversation wanders, Jared leads them north along blocks and blocks of back streets, circumventing the busy, touristy Piazza di Spagna and up the Via Margutta, turning off toward a tiny, tucked away neighborhood.

Jared takes them into a tiny store on the corner, where there’s an appropriately tiny Italian proprietress behind the counter, all in black, gray braids twisted around her head. If she stood, she’d barely come up to Jared’s waist.

“ _Buon giorno, signora_.” Jared pulls out a few bills and places them on the counter. “ _Due barattoli di vernice, prego_.”

She ducks down beneath the counter then comes back up to hand them each a can of spray paint—Jared blue, Jensen red. After she hands Jared back some change, she pulls him down by the arm and gives him two quick pats on the cheek, then waves them out cheerfully.

Jensen stage-whispers at him, “What are we doing?”

“You’ll see.”

Around the corner, they enter the square containing “The Baboon,” a little fountain with a statue that occupies space up against a wall of a Greek Orthodox church. Jared doesn’t know why it’s called the Baboon, since the statue is actually of Silenus, drunken satyr and friend of Dionysus.

The thing Jared finds cool about the place is that graffiti covers almost every available surface, at least the ones that aren’t streaked with blank spots from the periodic white-washing the city does, which simply refreshes the canvas, so to speak. Scrawled slogans, slurs, satirical verse, and defamatory remarks litter the walls around and behind the statue. For every legible scribble, a hundred are illegible, wild, swirling tags that decorate both the statue itself and the walls around and behind it. There’s a stencil of Pope John Paul II with _Santo Subito_ written below. _No blood for oil_ and _USA_ painted over with _Go Away_. Hammers and sickles, anarchy As, Celtic crosses and swastikas and pentagrams.

Also, the Baboon is apparently incensed about the fortunes of the capital’s two professional futbol teams.

Jared watches proudly as Jensen takes it all in, like it’s a gift he’s made for Jensen to open. Finally, Jensen turns to him and asks, “Is this legal?”

He grins. “Well, it’s tradition, which makes it better than legal in Rome.” Jared jerks the top off of his can of paint and gives it a shake. “Have at it!”

Then there’s the smell of aerosol, the satisfying sound of a ball bearing rattling in a tall can, and the hiss of release.

After a couple of trial shots of color here and there, Jensen lines himself up and carefully writes, ‘Jason Ross’ along a big white area on the statue’s base. When he turns to look for blank space on the opposite wall, Jared sneaks up and appends after it ‘wets the bed.’

“Asshole!” Jensen barks, and turns back to his wall, scrawling ‘Bite me!’ in huge red letters. Jared tosses his head back and laughs, delighted that Jensen seems to be enjoying this as much as Jared does, as much as he’d hoped Jensen would. It’s the illicit thrill of graffiti combined with the safety of permission, just what Jared figured would appeal to a guy searching for a way to break out of his routine, but only for one day. He sprays a big blue smiley face on the wall.

A few minutes later, while Jensen preoccupies himself with painting various insults to Jared in any number of ways, Jared sneaks his phone out and takes a picture.

 _Click._

They spray stupid shit on the walls of the alcove until they run out of paint, Jared saving the final bit of his in order to get the last word in about the superiority of the Spurs over the Mavericks once Jensen’s on empty. But Jensen outmaneuvers him with a triumphant grin, making a big show of contemplating where to place his last tag. He strolls around the courtyard and then, after a blink-and-you’d-miss-it glance over to where Jared’s leaning casually against the far wall, carefully writes his initials ‘JR’ just in front of a faded Anarchy symbol.

Afterward, they toss away their used-up cans and continue on, sometimes making conversation, sometimes in comfortable silence. He thinks about taking Jensen into the parks at the Villa Borghese, but he’s worried it’s a bit too close to the hotel where he knows Jensen’s staying, making it too easy for Jensen to bow out early.

Instead they wander west toward the Tiber. They stroll single file along the narrow Via del Vantaggio looking in store windows, Jensen asking for translations of random signs, until it opens up to a larger thoroughfare. There Jared buys roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, and Jensen teases Jared for stopping to pet random pedestrians’ dogs whenever he gets the chance.

“What kind of masochist keeps a dog in the city, anyway?”

Jared sighs, watching a little puff-ball Bichon lead his master away. “To be honest, I’ve been tempted. Then again, I can barely feed and walk myself.”

They pass two singers giving a random performance on a stoop, and Jensen puts a hand on Jared’s arm to stop and watch. The woman is gorgeous, tall and buxom with her dark hair in a pixie cut. Her companion is a man probably twice her age, slightly shorter and puckish, with a twinkle in his eye that insists performing is what life is all about.

Jared wasn’t that big on opera before moving to Rome, but nowadays he can’t get enough, and it amuses him that he can easily recognize the duet: early first act Alfredo and Violetta from _La Traviata_. It’s the story of a boy admitting infatuation and the beautiful, infamous celebrity who was both intrigued and mocking. Of course, it ends in tragedy. Something flutters at the pit of Jared’s stomach when they walk on, no particular destination in mind beyond exploring the neighborhoods.

After a minute or two of silent strolling, Jensen asks, “Why here, Jared? Why Rome?”

Jared trails his fingers along the rough brick of the wall beside him. “I took a couple of years of Latin in high school and then Italian in college, but didn’t have the money to take a semester abroad like some of my friends. I did manage to save up just enough for a plane ticket after graduation. Meant to only come for the summer.”

“So why stay?”

Jared thinks about it. He loves it here. The constant noise, the flamboyance, the casual regard for the thick strata of history. He loves the way coworkers at the magazine loop their arms through his as they walk down the street. Or the way a friend will place a hand on Jared’s shoulder or elbow or play with his watch when sitting at the bar listening to a story, nothing sexual—men or women—just tactile intimacy. He loves the way store owners and bartenders, once they get to know you, will let you run up a tab or slash fifteen percent from the bill if you pay cash or write a check to their aunt to whom they owe money. He loves the kisses goodbye and hello and the way strangers in line at a shop inquire about each other’s health and appear really, truly interested in the full rundown.

Those things are all true, but he gives Jensen an even more candid answer. “I think maybe I’m afraid to go home. Here I can just kind of live day-to-day. Be anyone I want, or no one. If I go back to the States, I have to start making a _life_ , you know?”

Jensen nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“I haven’t told anyone else this, but I’ve been accepted to four different MFA programs. Really great schools, amazing programs. I’m lucky to have gotten in to any of them. To make a long story short, I applied back in the fall, but now I can’t make myself commit to any of them.”

Jared feels like an idiot saying this to a man who’s had an astonishing career already before he’s even hit thirty, who’s achieved greatness and acclaim and the top honors in his field, makes millions of dollars every year, is adored by people all over the globe. But at the same time something about Jensen makes it easy to say this out loud. It’s not embarrassing or complicated, just… comfortable. Plus, it’s not like he’ll ever see Jensen again, so what’s the harm? It’s as if they’re both anonymous today.

Jared’s phone rings, and a glance at the screen shows that it’s either Genevieve or Sandy. He looks up at Jensen who gestures for him to take it.

A high-pitched voice sings out from the phone, “ _Ciao, ciao_ , baby boy. What’s up?” It’s Genevieve and she’s probably looking for a lunch partner.

Jared falls back from where Jensen’s walking a few steps ahead, for privacy. “I met a guy.”

“Oh? Oh.” The girl catches on quick. He hears her shout something to Sandy in the background. “Well, that was fast. Well done!”

“Gee, thanks,” Jared replies, deadpan. “But I gotta go.”

“Don’t do anyone we wouldn’t do.”

“That’s not exactly narrowing the field, Gen.”

“See, that’s your problem. You need to embrace your inner slut.”

“ _Ciao, bella_.” Jared snaps the phone closed and hurries to catch up to where Jensen’s waiting to cross the street.

"So, girlfriend?" Jensen asks.

It’s an innocent question, but Jared fumbles for an answer. "Um. No. Just—a couple of buddies calling. Checking in."

"You're such an awful liar, Jared.” Jensen shakes his head ruefully. “If you want someone to believe you, you've got to keep your feet still, avoid swallowing hard, and prevent your eyelashes from fluttering."

Jared feels his face warm.

"Yeah," Jensen reaches out, waving toward Jared's face, fingers almost brushing his cheek. "That's pretty much a dead giveaway."

The near touch of Jensen’s hand sets Jared’s nerves jangling. He twitches away, "Since when are you giving free acting lessons?"

As soon as he says it, he wants to reel it back in. _Shit._

For a moment Jared sees something flash in Jensen's eyes, but before he can tell whether it’s suspicion or what, it’s gone. Jensen simply cocks an eyebrow and shrugs one shoulder, cool as a cucumber. Jared’s getting to the point where he can recognize Jensen’s “public” face, and he finds he doesn’t like it one bit.

They continue on, Jared leading Jensen through the backyard of Rome, looking to reclaim the sense of easy camaraderie he felt earlier, propelling Jensen through private courtyards, along dark alleys stinking of piss, behind buildings famous and obscure, under monuments, beneath arches, over crumbling pre-Christian masonry, through gaps in walls. All the more obscure places Jared has discovered in his months exploring the city.

At one point they walk through a small open square dominated by a shapely Renaissance palazzo. They pass a couple necking, seated on the edge of an ancient fountain. Jared doesn’t really process it; Roman parks tend to be filled with fairly graphic public displays of affection, couples of all ages going at it like teenagers dying to get past first base before their parents walk in. But this particular couple is two young men, a guy with a long leg wrapped around his partner, enthusiastically pinning him to the marble. They’re both dressed for the office; one has his tie thrown over his shoulder and his hand tugs at his lover’s as they kiss.

Jared wonders what Jensen’s like when he kisses, not for the camera, but when it’s real. Wonders if he’s tender and thorough, or forceful and frantic. He thinks about that one love scene from last year’s blockbuster, _Ivanhoe_ , how Jensen’s costar might’ve felt when he crowded her up against the wall, feverishly stripping off her clothes, when he tossed her down on a bed to cover her with his body. How the tabloids had reported they were sleeping together off-screen, and Jared can imagine that perhaps some of real life bled through onto film. His breath comes quicker and he picks up the pace a little to hide it, hurrying Jensen past the fountain over toward a passageway out of the square toward the city beyond.

They’ve been skirting the curve of the Tiber, but now they cross over a nearby bridge, the Ponte Principe Amedeo Savoia Aosta. The water of the river below is pale green-gray, wrinkled silver with sunlight. A plywood plank the width and length of a minivan travels slowly downstream. Jared repeats something he'd heard about the river being full of corpses and hissing snakes in the days of the empire's decline; of kings, emperors, popes, antipopes, and political officials all being killed and thrown into the Tiber. Jared stops himself mid-sentence as he catches Jensen staring at him with a strange look on his face.

"Not thinking of throwing me in there, are you?" Jared asks.

"Not yet," says Jensen.

Jared takes a break from city streets, takes them along the scenic walk along the crest of the Janiculum, past the massive statue of Garibaldi on horseback, past the pedestals and busts of all his lieutenants, down the steep narrow alley plunging back toward the Tiber. They enter back into the _centro storico_ over the Ponte Sisto, ambling by the makeshift tables and blankets people have spread out on the ground, selling everything from watches and knockoff Prada purses to Pope Benedict dinner plates, t-shirts, and heads molded from plastic, a misaligned seam bisecting his face.

They stop at the foot of the bridge to look out at the river once more, resting on their elbows side by side. “Tired?” Jared challenges.

Jensen shakes his head negative. “Man, this is a cakewalk compared to what my trainer puts me through every single day.”

“Trainer, huh?” Jared smirks. “He’s got nothing on me.”

He heads toward the Piazza Navona neighborhood, so that he can drag Jensen up to the top of the neglected and obscure Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. “Ignore the outside, it’s the second tallest dome in the city, after St. Peter’s. You won’t believe the view from the terrace.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jensen mutters under his breath as they huff up the neverending spiral stairs, tiny windows, one every quarter turn, showing only sky. “I thought I said ‘no sights.’”

Jared turns around and walks backward up the stairs. “Quit whining."

“Fall on me and we’ll both break our necks on the way down. Now how is that fun?”

"Just tell me you’re not afraid of heights," Jared says.

"You’re only considering that _now_?”

They creep out the trapdoor on top and stand at the tiny railing as if at the brink of a cliff or on the head of a pin. All of Rome spreads out below them, winding streets and terra-cotta roofs and the soft curves of domes: the French Friars and San Carlo ai Catinari, the flying saucer shape of the Pantheon, St. Peter’s lording over them all.

It’s bright and golden-hot this close to the sun. Jared reaches out his arms and his clothes fill with wind. Jensen strips off his outer shirt and lays it over the rail.

Jared turns to smile at Jensen, but he’s got his chin propped in his hand, gazing at the city rolling out beneath them. While Jensen takes in the view, Jared takes in Jensen’s profile: the unerring line of his nose, the rise of cheekbones, the mussed hair and the perfection of jawline. He’s Trajan himself surveying the troops, watching the battle from the heights, entering the city on horseback in martial triumph. He’s a monk contemplating the glory of God. He’s a man, beads of sweat at his temple.

The phone comes out, and Jared studiously pretends to check email.

 _Click._

Despite his bitching on the stairs, Jensen keeps them up there for forty-five more minutes, asking Jared to point out various landmarks and neighborhoods and the exact location of his apartment. The flocks of starlings that plague the city swerve and dive around them, a shower of black against the bright-blue of the sky. Thousands of them, maybe millions. Jared, half-earnest, says he’s trying to interpret the auspices of their flight. He turns it into a game of shapes: a necklace, a car, a coffee cup, a hand reaching out. He feels Jensen’s gaze on him.

“Is it really so bad?” Jared asks, a non sequitur.

“What?” Jensen replies.

“Your work.”

Jensen shakes his head, mouth twisted. "Yes," he says. "It's like a horrifying hell on earth. But at least they don’t make me write fiction."

Jared leans his elbows on the rail and chuckles, not even trying to suck up, just because it turns out Jensen’s wry sense of humor is awesome. But he presses, “No. Really.”

Jensen’s smile drops and he blows out a breath. "Well, it's complicated, Jared, you know what I mean? Sometimes it can really be enjoyable, rewarding. On the best days it can give you a high like you’ve never known. But… I think I’m burnt out. Overcommitted. I get tired of all the routine. The demands. The hounding and harrying. Every day on a schedule, on display. I never get days like this—just to do anything I want. You were saying earlier how scared you were to go out a make yourself a life. Well, it—it turns out that’s all I really want. My _own_ life, not someone else’s.”

Even if Jared didn’t know the background, he thinks he’d understand.

They’re quiet for a while after that, staring out over the city. Finally, Jensen grabs his shirt, buttoning it back up, swats Jared on the shoulder, and they descend back to the streets.

When they reach the sidewalk, Jared announces, “Lunch!”

“Are you kidding?” Jensen says. “We just had breakfast.”

“Not really, man, it’s almost two o’clock.” Then Jared can’t help himself. The geek in him rears up and he says, “'And what about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper?’”

Jensen looks him up and down, then shoots back, straight-faced, “'I think there's more to this hobbit than meets the eye.’”

They trade ridiculous quotes back and forth—at one point Jared mock-warbling Pippin’s Song—until finally, simultaneously, they intone, “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

Jensen, grinning, raises both arms in the air for a high five, and Jared slaps his hands and cackles. “Dork!” Their laugher mixes together as they start forward again. Jared can’t help but wonder, _This can’t really be Jensen Ackles, can it?_

But it seems that, despite all rumors to the contrary, Jensen is a good guy, a _fun_ guy. And—even aside from how hot he is or how Jared keeps getting distracted by the crinkles at the edges of his eyes or the curve of his lips or all of those other things his rabid fans swoon over—it turns out Jared actually likes him. Jared can’t decide what that means for the task he’s set for himself. Is he going to be able to write the kind of breathless, sordid trivia his magazine demands about celebrities when it’s turned on someone he’s starting to respect?

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Jared takes Jensen a couple of blocks south to one of his local haunts, a hip, cheap little _trattoria_ on the corner of a narrow street lined with bikes and cycles, with its walls lined with bottles and its tables crowded with artists, musicians, and flat-broke students wearing three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar shoes. He pushes open the wood-and-glass door and herds Jensen inside.

Jensen makes a beeline toward one of the round, polished tables in the very back. Jared notices him still automatically hunching over, using the pretense of taking off his sunglasses to shield his face from the other patrons. Jared deliberately looks away and pretends not to notice.

One of Jared’s favorites on the menu here is the _penne all'arrabbiata_ , advertised as the spiciest in Rome. Jared grins at the portly, white-haired waiter and orders it extra-spicy just to see how Jensen will react. When the fragrant, steaming bowls of pasta arrive, of course Jensen simply woofs his down with gusto, and they spend the next half hour trading stories about the hottest salsas in Texas and boasting about the varying amounts of heat they can withstand from Mexican and Indian and Thai dishes. The waiter strolls by periodically with bread and serves a couple of rounds of dry house red wine in water glasses, but mostly he just leaves them alone.

They chat and eat and make fun of the other diners. Jared doesn’t once ask a question that would be of interest to someone reading a tabloid. He simply makes it his goal to see if he can get Jensen to smile at least seven more times before they finish.

 

  
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“What next, O Great Tour Guide?” Jensen asks, once they’re back on the street.

As they turn a corner into a square of more soft pink and burnt orange buildings, Jared points. Jensen follows his finger to where there’s a sign that says RomaRent and a squadron of scooters for lease by the hour lined up along the curb. “Vespas!” Jared announces.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Jensen growls.

“What? You don't need a license. It’s cheap—which is good for my wallet—and really easy. We can get around a lot faster. And most of all, it’ll be fun!” Also, Jared figures that, wearing a helmet, Jensen won’t have to worry so much about being recognized.

Jensen looks nonplussed. “But… my insurance company doesn’t let me ride motorcycles.”

“These aren’t motorcycles!” Jared insists, dragging at his arm. “They’re tinkertoys.”

Jensen looks like he’s about to dig his heels in, but then Jared gives him his best puppy eyes and Jensen gives in with a little laugh, heading up to the counter behind Jared.

Jared picks a red one; Jensen chooses black. They’re silly little scooters; Jared knows he looks like an idiot, knees poking out to the sides, perched on it like an elephant on a trike. But when Jensen climbs onto his, throwing his leg over the saddle and spreading his reach wide to grip the handles, Jared gains a new and unexpected appreciation for the phrase “sex on wheels.”

Only Jensen Ackles could make a Vespa look like a Harley.

Jensen goes to reach for his helmet and Jared swiftly pulls out his phone. “Let me quick check my email before we go.”

 _Click_.

Jared stows it back in his pants pocket as they both rev the Vespas’ engines to life. Jensen raises his voice to make one last protest. “You know we’re going to be killed, right? Have you _seen_ the drivers here?”

“Nothing to it, man. I promise. Just follow my lead.”

Jensen throws a looks at Jared that says, _You’re my least favorite person in the world at the moment_.

“Harness your fear and let your inner Hell's Angel take over!” Jared shouts.

“You’re a jackass!” Jensen yells back, and shoves on his helmet.

They streak away, charging between lines of parked cars, their side mirrors either tucked in or torn off. Jared’s deliberately starting out slow-- at first sticking to the broader, straighter side streets he knows-- but keeping pace with traffic means they can’t dawdle.

An archway up ahead opens onto a boulevard buzzing with cars. They sit at the curb and watch for a moment as the traffic zigzags along, a symphony of horns, and Jensen shouts over to him, “Like Frogger!” halfway out of breath, and grinning.

They turn into the flow, BMWs and Fiats racing beside them, faces of the drivers flickering past, the tires of their _motorini_ rumbling across the cobbles. It’s often a tight squeeze to make their way, and the two bikes are sometimes forced so close together that, even at fifteen or twenty miles an hour, Jared could reach across and tap Jensen’s thigh if he wanted to.

And the compulsion to reach out and touch is so strong, as if he needs to keep testing to make sure Jensen is real, as if Jensen is a figment of his imagination that might flash and disappear. He supposes it’s the carbon monoxide from the traffic causing some high-frequency mental interference, a distortion that flares in Jared’s head like speaker feedback and makes dealing with reality suddenly a challenge. Because he has no idea how this can be real.

They head east through the heart of ancient Rome. Jared steers them past the ruins of the the Trajan Market and the Forums, until they reach the Colosseum, one of Rome's sweetest confections, half-chewed by age. They pull over into the parking lot right in front of the unruly lines of mismatched tour buses and vans to rest and soak it in. Jared strips off his helmet and pushes handfuls of sweaty hair back off of his face, tucking it behind his ears. He thinks it may be time for a haircut.

Jensen glances from the monument to Jared and back again. "It’s bigger," remarks Jensen. "Bigger than I thought it would be."

"That's what she said," Jared says. Jensen snorts in response, which Jared appreciates because, honestly, the joke is tired. “We could go in?” Jared offers.

“Nah,” Jensen replies, and they sit on the bikes in silence for few minutes, watching the stream of eager tourists ebb and flow, stopping to take pictures with locals dressed up in half-assed gladiator costumes of bristle-crested helmets, tin cuirasses, and red socks.

"When I was a kid,” Jared says without taking his eyes off of the building before them, “my dad used to tell me stories about the lions and the Christians, fighting to the death. Bloodsport and all that. He would always say he wished they’d gotten together… teamed up and preyed on the spectators instead."

Jensen doesn’t answer, just keeps looking straight ahead as well.

 

  
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They only have an hour’s worth of leased time on the bikes and Jared can feel each second ticking away. Riding through this city by scooter is one of his favorite guilty pleasures (guilty, because it wasn’t exactly as cheap as he’d told Jensen, and Jared can’t always afford the rental fee). But on the scooter, you don’t just tour Rome, you slip into it and it parts around you like warm water.

Jared can tell Jensen’s getting confident and more comfortable as they slalom through slow-moving traffic, sometimes invading sidewalks like native bikers, careening up and down one-way streets. Then the light where they’re stopped switches to green, and as Jared leads them out into the intersection, a late-coming little Alfa Romeo races through and barely clips Jared’s front tire. The handlebars wrench out of his grip and his seat spins out from under him. In the blink of an eye he’s airborne, heart in his mouth and stomach left behind as the blur of concrete rushes towards him.

He slams down with an _Ooof_ as all the air punches out of his chest. He thinks he rolls once or twice, and sends up a vague hope that he doesn’t end up under the wheels of oncoming traffic, because he’s not moving anytime soon and even if he could, he doesn’t know which way is up.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Jensen jump from his own bike and throw his helmet off, shouting “Jared!” He runs to where Jared lies blurry-eyed and tingling on the ground. Jensen keeps saying it— _Jared. Jared._ —and it sounds really nice.

Jared swallows and wiggles his toes, feeling fine except for the fact that he can’t get enough air into his lungs to reply, can't quite catch his breath. Jensen’s gaze rakes over him—concern and fear and gentleness clear in his eyes—and Jared soaks it up. He longs for that connection to be genuine, wants it to be for the real him, not this counterfeit-Jared constructed out of lies and greed.

Unexpectedly, a _carabiniere_ appears, stick-figure thin in his black police uniform. He bears a striking resemblance to Bert from Sesame Street. Jared would comment on the likeness, but he doesn’t think Jensen would find it funny right now. The officer directs traffic to go around them and he stoutly tells Jensen, in Italian of course, to get himself and his friend out of the roadway.

Jared goes to sit up and blinks, because Jensen is so close, hovering over him, right in Jared’s space, and his hands are warm and reassuring on Jared’s shoulders. Even if he hadn’t just been run over by the proverbial truck, he thinks he’d be lightheaded from the closeness. “Hey,” he finally breathes. “I’m good.”

Jensen shakes his head and helps Jared to his feet, draping Jared’s arm over his shoulder to get him to the curb, a reverse of their positions from the night before. Then Jensen hurries to pull the two bikes—Jared’s apparently undamaged in the collision—onto the sidewalk behind him. When Jensen’s finished, he parks himself next to Jared, who hasn’t moved, his hand lightly resting on Jared’s shoulder blade.

“Seriously, do you need an ambulance?”

Jared does a mental check now that his brain is coming back online. He shakes out his arms and legs, rolls his shoulders. Everything seems okay. “Naw, I’m all right. Really. A little bruised, maybe. Doesn’t even look like I got some road rash as a trophy.”

Jensen looks away, watches the traffic whiz past for a minute or two. “You scared the fuck out of me.”

Jared’s heart thumps, then quickens. Stupid heart. “Sorry,” he replies. “I’ve biked around Rome a dozen times, never even been close to an accident. I wouldn’t have brought you out if I’d actually thought it was dangerous.”

They sit for awhile longer, the needle of Jared’s internal compass gradually rebounding back to north, until he feels pulled together enough to look at his watch. “We gotta get the scooters back now. We’ll just go slow, okay?”

“Okay.”

They ease back onto their bikes and head through the intersection with no problem. The _carabiniere_ stands on the corner with his arms crossed, casually chatting with another officer. He coolly raises one bushy Bert eyebrow at them and Jared waves.

***

When they turn the scooters in, Jared makes full disclosure about the accident, looking as contrite and innocent and pitiful as humanly possible, but the clerk at the rental store simply asks, “Does it still run?” and when Jared says yes, she shrugs, unconcerned.

They head back out, Jensen insisting they avoid all transportation, public or private, other than their own two feet.

“Okay, so I know you said no touristy stuff, but we’re really close to the Piazza Bocca della Verità.”

“And that means?”

“Well, possibly some school groups and maybe a tour bus, but let’s check it out and if there’s a long line we can forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“You’ll see.”

Jensen huffs indignantly, but follows. “As long as it doesn’t involve your life flashing before my eyes, I guess I’m in.”

Jared feels a little core of warmth well up in him at Jensen’s dogged concern and then suddenly it turns to cold. Jensen’s supposed to be this vain, pampered, stuck-up movie star, but he’s turned out to be none of those things. Jensen isn’t just a pretty face and he isn’t an asshole, and one hundred thousand euros is riding on Jared’s willingness to deceive him into giving up some personal secrets and then trumpet those secrets to the world. It’s a plan that’s becoming more and more difficult to rationalize.

And that’s not even taking into account how much Jared wants Jensen to run off to some desert island with him where they can walk shirtless in the surf and roast fish over an open fire and herd sea turtles and maybe adopt a volleyball together.

They walk through yet another square with another fountain and cross a busy street to a tiny church. It resembles so many others they’ve passed today: terra cotta walls and carved columns and archways, tiny nooks and complex inlaid tiles criss-crossing the floors. Jared peeks through the wrought-iron gate at the entrance, but there’s only a short line, maybe ten people ahead of them, so he motions Jensen inside.

Set into the far wall is a round marble plaque, probably five feet in diameter. It’s a sculpture of a giant face, cracked and weathered with age; the eyes are worn, hollow holes and the ragged mouth gapes open.

“Interesting,” Jensen says when he glimpses the face over the heads of the line of tourists, “but I don’t get it.”

“There’s this cool legend that’s been around since ancient times that if a liar puts his hand inside the mouth, he’ll lose it.”

“Hmm, charming.”

“Yep.” Jared can’t remember the actual legend, but he figures he can wing it. “From what I understand, one time there was a prince—“

“Don’t you mean 'once upon’ a time?”

“Dude. That’s so five centuries ago.” The corner of Jensen’s mouth crooks up, and he motions Jared to continue. “This prince was sovereign of many lands and was betrothed to marry a foreign princess, and she told him she loved him."

Jensen nods. "Sounds promising."

"So this prince has some suspicions about the girl. He wants to marry her, and she says she wants to marry him, but he doesn't think she's telling the truth. He thinks that she's really secretly in love with her tutor, which she is. And much as he'd like to marry this princess, he doesn't want to think she'd be unfaithful to him or just plain not love him. So he suggests that they both prove their love in the Mouth of Truth."

"The Mouth of Truth?"

Jared nods. "Yeah, like I said, you put your hand in the mouth, and you say something to test whether it was true or not. In their case, they both had to say 'I love you.'"

Jensen’s lip twitches into a half-smile. "And what happened when she lied?"

Jared grins. "Why, the statue went and bit her hand clean off."

"Not exactly a Disney ending there, Jared."

Jared shrugs, face solemn. "I just convey it as it’s been passed through the generations."

"I’d bet,” Jensen replies, “that the princess went back to her tutor, and he loved her, even without that hand. I mean, if they truly loved each other, power and position couldn't separate them, could it?" His voice trails away, and he looks vaguely embarrassed. “Sorry, wow. I have no idea where that came from.”

"No problem. Doesn’t every little girl like you dream of being a princess?" Jared’s quip covers his surprise at discovering this-- should he call it “romantic?”-- side of Jensen. He tucks that information away, needing some time to digest it. Another surprising facet to this complex man. Jared shifts uncomfortably at the thought of sharing this little moment with the world, but then puts it aside when he realizes that they’re next in line. He beckons for Jensen to try. "Come on, test it out, let's see if it works." He smiles slyly. "I want to see you try. Put your hand in, and if you lie, it won't be there when you pull it out."

"That's ridiculous. I did just see half a dozen people in front of us do that exact thing, genius, and nothing happened."

"Scared?"

"As if." Jensen sidles up to the face and places his hand in, slowly easing his fingers deeper until his palm just disappears from view. He gives Jared a disparaging look. "Not so hard, huh?" But then he lets out a cry as his whole body jerks and his arm disappears far back into the mouth.

Jared shouts, grabbing onto Jensen’s other arm, trying to pull him away. Together they stumble a few steps from the sculpture, but when Jared checks Jensen’s sleeve, it’s empty. He sees nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then—

"Hello!" Jensen shoots his hand out from where he’d hid it up inside his shirt and offers it to Jared to shake.

Jared jumps back from it like a giant dork, and, embarrassed, he leans back in to thump Jensen hard on the chest. "How could you do that to me? Stealing my trick? That was supposed to be the joke on _you_!" He glares one more time for good measure, and then starts laughing. "You are a truly hideous individual."

"I know,” Jensen smirks. “I guess we’re well-matched."

 

  
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The afternoon is wearing away. They head northwest again and eventually pass an outdoor market on a narrow street that is only a couple of blocks from the huge outdoor market in the Piazza Campo De' Fiori. The vendors’ stalls run along both sides of the street, one of those medieval alleyways with no sidewalks or yards, only dark tall storefronts and houses walling in the narrow pavement. The stalls are rickety affairs of rough wood; some are adorned with striped canopies, but artificial ornamentation isn’t necessary. The wares on sale make compositions of shape and color brighter than any bunting. Soft, crumpled chartreuse leaves of lettuce, symmetrical heaps of oranges and tangerines, massive vats of oil-cured olives, bins of beans and peas and little wooden boxes of fruit. Jared knows that mornings are the busiest for outdoor markets, but even this late in the afternoon the noise is deafening—engines roaring, crates and boxes clattering, people yelling, most of it good-natured bickering over the quality of goods and the prices.

Jared’s stomach growls. Jensen looks sideways at him. “Hey, why don’t we pick up something here for dinner? Go back and eat at your place?”

Jared thinks it’s possible that Jensen is aware of how much money Jared’s spent today and is trying to be frugal. It’s tremendously endearing.

“I don’t mind shelling out for a nice place to eat. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting some fantastic restaurant around here, and I know you’re good for your half.”

“As appetizing as you make that dead cat sound—“ Jensen cocks one reproachful eyebrow. “--I’m thinking home cooking. It’s on my wish list. Aren’t you my fairy godmother today?”

Jared grins. “Fine. C’mon.”

He finds himself battling the urge to take Jensen’s hand as they wade into the sea of customers thronging through the stalls. Because even though his Italian friends would think nothing of it, he’s pretty sure Jensen’s not quite that touchy-feely.

Jared makes a mental list of some things he needs in order to cook Jensen dinner and thinks about what he’s got in the kitchen at home, then dives in, getting the attention of one of the merchants at a produce stand.

“ _Va bene, signore_?” he asks.

“ _Molto bene, grazie_ ,” Jared answers, picking up a melon and squeezing it for ripeness.

Jensen wanders away as Jared selects some vegetables and chicken and a hard hunk of Romano cheese, and buys each of them a gelato to hold them over until dinner.

Jared finds him chatting with a vendor a few stalls down. The guy is Jared’s age, maybe a little younger, but dark and tiny, no taller than Jensen’s chin. Pretty much Jared’s opposite in every way. Jared’s afraid that the guy has recognized Jensen by the way he’s leaning in a bit too close, too eager. Jared frowns, strides over. Jensen Ackles doesn’t actually chat with fans, does he? But before he reaches them to rescue Jensen from his admirer, Jensen takes a paper the guy offers, tucks it in his pocket and turns to Jared, face lighting up.

“Ice cream! Awesome. Dude, do you _ever_ stop eating? I mean, I know you’re gigantic and all, but there’s only so many calories a human body needs.”

Jared hands him one of the cardboard cups and jerks his chin toward the stall as they walk away. “So what was that?”

“Ah, nothing.”

“All right.” Jared shrugs, looks down and starts eating his gelato before it melts, pushing down a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. He doesn’t own Jensen, after all. They’re just hanging together for a couple of hours while he tricks Jensen into revealing things he’d never admit publicly in order to make a buck off of him. Jared needs to be real about this. Jensen’s not his date, he will never be Jared’s _boyfriend_ , for god’s sake. There’s no glass slipper, no happily ever after.

Jared carries the grocery bag and Jensen walks along beside, gazing up at the architecture and pointing out strange or unique elements. Just a few blocks over they cross into a small plaza, and there’s a group of kids playing in the big basin of a crumbling marble fountain, giggling and squealing and splashing each other with water.

It’s a beautiful scene and by mutual unspoken agreement, they stop to watch. Unfortunately, they’re standing a bit too close, and before they can escape, Jensen, who’s nearer, is soaked from a huge misdirected spray from one of the frolicking children sticking his finger in the nozzle of the fountain’s water source. Jared looks at Jensen, worried that he’ll be upset, and is surprised to find him kicking off his shoes and jumping into the fountain, grabbing up handfuls of water and tossing it at the half-dozen or so children, who shriek and run and splash back in various measure.

Jared checks the block to make sure there are no police around to take offense, then he once more pulls out his phone. Jensen’s wet and laughing and it’s… it’s incredible.

 _Click. Click._

A few minutes later, Jensen rejoins him. He’s sopping wet and panting for breath and Jared wants nothing more in the entire world at that moment than to pull Jensen into his arms and _taste_ him.

Instead, they walk together for the last few blocks, Jensen telling him stories about his own childhood, running through sprinklers with his brother in the backyard and his best friend’s Slip-n-Slide where he broke his collarbone when he was nine. The sky is that heartbreaking violet only seen on very clear nights, pocked with a few warm stars strong enough to stand against the city’s illumination. It’s dusk, and bats pour out of archways and swoop past them, flying in shadowy arcs. Night seeps through the alleys, over the roofs, among the leaves of the decorative trees that periodically appear along the streets, cut by the headlights of the traffic always dashing by.

“Thanks, man,” Jensen says softly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he responds. “Didn’t want the day to end.”

“They say that about visiting Rome,” Jared says. “ _Non basta una vita_ —a lifetime is not enough.”

“Rome. Right.”

Jensen’s voice is strained, and Jared peers through the opaque light to get a sense of what’s wrong. It’s been a warm April, but the sun’s gone down and Jared notices goosebumps dotting Jensen’s arms, making the fine hairs rise. His lips are slightly blue. So when they reach the apartment, Jared quickly opens the door, shepherds Jensen inside.

He heads for the kitchen to set down the bag of groceries and says, “Why don’t you jump in the shower and warm up?”

“What’ll I do about these?” Jensen indicates his still-soggy clothes.

“There’s a washer and dryer one floor down. I’ll throw them in there and they’ll be finished by the time we get something to eat.”

“And I’ll be wearing?” Jensen’s face is a study in neutrality.

Jared quickly turns away, smooth as he can. He opens the door and peeks into the bin to the right. Sure enough, the clothes he’d asked little Alessandro to bring up are sitting inside. Jared grabs them up, the same pants and tee Jensen wore that morning.

“Here.” He tosses them to Jensen. No boxers, because that would be really awkward. _Less awkward than Jensen going commando?_ Jared thinks. Maybe not, but too late now.

Jensen fumbles to catch the clothes out of the air, snags the pants by one leg, drops the shirt. He bends down to retrieve it and stands staring at the bundle in his hands a moment.

“Um. Why don’t I rustle us up some grub?” Jared mentally smacks himself in the head. He’s spent all day with Jensen, no problem, and now all of a sudden he’s as tongue-tied as a boy at the seventh grade dance.

Jensen looks back up, smirk spreading over his face, and mocks Jared’s drawl. “I have to admit, I’m powerful hungry. Ah might start gnawin’ on mah own arm!”

Jared snorts. “Well, I can’t guarantee something quite that tasty.” And it’s okay because it comes out sounding sarcastic, not perverted, but, jeeze, Jared really needs to, first, not sound like he’s flirting and, second, _not_ be thinking about what Jensen tastes like. Not a bit.

“What can I say?” Jensen turns and heads toward the bathroom. “Grade-A meat, Jared.” He flings a grin over his shoulder and shuts the door behind him.

Jared should head over to the little half-sized fridge, figure out what he can throw together with what he bought back from the market. But instead he stands still, listening to the squeal of the faucet handle, the soft rush of the water, the _thunk_ of Jensen’s belt as his pants hit the tile floor, and the _shrrrck_ of the curtain being pulled back.

He hears the change in the water’s pattern as Jensen steps in and somehow he finds he’s crossed the ten feet over to the closed bathroom door. He presses his face against it, feeling the warmth of the steam escaping from around the edges.

He pictures Jensen, naked, water running in rivulets through his hair down his throat and bare chest and ass and calves. He imagines Jensen’s cock growing hard in his hand as he jerks off, cupping his balls, head thrown back. Maybe he’s thinking of Jared, wishing Jared was crowding into the tiny shower with him, pressing Jensen against the tiles. Jared grips the doorframe, white-knuckled, white-lipped, resisting the urge to turn the handle to see, to touch, to sip the water from his skin.

He despairs at the way Jensen has taken over him, how Jared’s every thought is now governed by the need to see Jensen smile that wry smile. After today Jared thinks he’ll suffer in what is undisputedly the most romantic city in the world, a city full of beautiful people, aching to walk side by side again with this one person in particular; this one unreachable one, the one trying to both hide and break out at the same time, looking open and lonely and more irresistible than he ever had on screen.

And when that thought hits him he shoves away from the door, hands scrubbing at his face. Jensen’s straight, he’s rich and famous, and he loathes the tabloids. All of which makes Jared a complete and utter idiot.

He busies himself in the tiny kitchen, puts on some water to boil, pokes around for possible ingredients on the shelves at eye level that act as a pantry. He snatches up some garlic and shallots and chops them with a couple of market tomatoes, sautés them with the chicken, adds white vinegar and white wine in equal measure. Leaving it to simmer, Jared moves around the apartment, folding up the bed and pulling out a tiny card table and a couple of chairs.

He hears the shower shut off and a few minutes later Jensen emerges, skin fresh-scrubbed pink and hair damp over the ears and on the nape of his neck. Jared blinks, freezes in mid-stir of the pan.

Jensen holds up his damp clothes. “You said there was a dryer I can toss these in?”

“Down one floor, to the right, laundry room is on your left.”

When he returns, Jensen makes straight for the bottle of red wine Jared left open to breathe on the counter and fills his glass up past three-quarters full. He takes a gulp and then makes a show of inhaling deeply, “What in the world are you making? It smells fantastic!”

Jared blushes and turns to drain the pasta through a colander. “Hope you like it. It’s just some chicken and tomatoes and stuff.”

He dishes them both up heaping portions on some magnificent mismatched porcelain Genevieve had collected for him at various bazaars and carries it over to the table. He urges Jensen to sit down while he makes a couple more trips back and forth for things he’s forgotten: the thick-grated strips of Romano, then the wine, then a cutting board with some hard-crust bread and finally a dish of olive oil for dipping. He finally stops dithering and plops down in his seat, watching as Jensen takes a bite and moans happily.

“Wow,” Jensen says, mouth full and chewing. “Wow! Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

“A girlfriend of mine in college talked me into taking a culinary class with her as an elective, and, I don’t know, I found I had a knack for it, I guess. I really love it, like to play around, make up my own recipes. And, well, living in Rome hasn’t exactly hurt."

“Cool,” Jensen replies, but he gets a little quiet after that. Jared throws out a few lures of conversation, but Jensen doesn’t seem to want to pick up on them. It’s not uncomfortable, though, so Jared focuses on his own food, offers Jensen the bread, enjoys the company. It’s not that Jensen hates the food either, Jared thinks, as Jensen takes his empty plate back for seconds and Jared opens a second bottle of wine.

After they finish the pasta, Jared slices up some apples and melon and cheese for dessert, arranging it carefully in a fan shape. When he sets the plate down on the table, Jensen’s rolling the stem of his wineglass between his hands. The red washes around the bowl of the glass, throwing ruby-rich tones against his skin.

“So, can I read something of yours?”

It surprises Jared, freaks him out a little, actually, because he doesn’t usually let strangers read his “real” work. Then again, perhaps Jensen doesn’t count as a stranger anymore. He casts his mind around for something worthy, something not from his lowest-common-denominator, gossip-for-hire byline or from his overly-deliberate, stylized stories for publication in literary quarterlies. Something real.

He steps around Jensen’s chair and walks over to the side table by the bed, crouching down to reach the little lower shelf where there’s a decent-sized stack of black moleskins. He picks up a couple and starts thumbing through them. He can feel Jensen’s eyes on him, waiting, but he doesn’t rush, wants to find the right thing.

He flips through the one on top. It’s full of first impressions, loose threads of thought: one-paragraph sketches of people, notes about food and tastes and odors, descriptions of colors or conversations that he’d found quirky or instructive. It makes him wonder about himself as a writer—if he is capable of anything more than a kind of formless wandering through experience, getting lost in the pleasure of observation without much thought of the underlying meaning.

But halfway through the second notebook, he stops when he finds a biographical piece about coming out after college: to himself, then later to his family. He runs his fingers over the words, tracing them. He stands, replaces the other books in their place, and takes the five steps back over to the table, holding the pages open toward Jensen like a menu.

Jensen takes the notebook gently in hand and starts to read. Jared searches Jensen’s inscrutable face.

It’s a longish essay, about how Jared had dated one girl all through high school and freshman year of college, how she’d been “waiting for marriage” and how fine he was with that. How after their breakup he’d spent the next few years seeking to fit in with his fraternity brothers by industriously but indifferently sleeping with as many women as would have him, but that it was an exchange of drunken blowjobs with one of those brothers during Spring Break senior year that had opened his eyes, pointing out what had been missing in all of his previous sexual encounters, making it impossible to ignore what he’d been determined to deny. It ended with his coming out to his siblings and his unexpectedly supportive parents after graduation.

It takes Jensen less than ten minutes to get through it. In the meantime, Jared’s had two more glasses of wine.

When Jensen finishes he closes the notebook and sets it on the table, staring at it, pressing down on it with both hands.

Jared breaks the silence. “So that’s when I finally admitted that I was gay. Not quite two years ago now. I—um—I hope that doesn’t freak you out.”

Jensen works in Hollywood, he's gotta be aware he’s got a huge gay fan-following, so Jared figures the guy can’t be too homophobic, but they did just spend the day attached at the hip and he’s sitting here at Jared’s table wearing Jared’s clothes and, yeah, this could be awkward.

Jensen shakes his head once and lets out this strange little laugh, corner of his mouth twisted up in a knot, and the blood drains from Jared’s face, his hands going cold. Jared knew he was putting himself out there with this revelation, but he hadn’t realized how deeply Jensen’s disdain would wound him. He thought... well, he didn’t know what he’d thought.

Reaching out to take the notebook back, Jared clears his throat, but his disloyal voice still comes out a bit wobbly as he says, “Sorry. I didn’t intend to make you uncomfortable. Let’s just forget it, okay?”

Jensen nods, almost to himself as much as Jared. “Nah, I can relate.” He looks up at Jared, his eyes a little shiny. “Actually, I’m sort of jealous. I’m—I’m gay, too, but it’s still very much a deep, dark secret. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be able to tell everyone.”

Jared’s heart stops beating. He gives a barely audible, “Oh,” and thinks his mouth might actually be hanging open. He thinks of all the actresses and models Jensen’s been linked to over the years. The whole saga of his relationship with Danneel Harris, how they were the darling couple of the tabloids until their rather public breakup. His own tabloid’s regular “Jensen’s Just Jilted” column. A million questions hang on his lips, but none he can ask without revealing he knows Jensen’s identity.

Finally, he stammers out, “If it’s a secret, how do you… do you? Date? Guys?” Oh god, did he really just indirectly ask Jensen Ackles about whether he’s _seeing someone_?

The lines of Jensen’s face tighten and he looks away, over Jared’s shoulder, pasting on a ghastly smile. “Oh, I don’t really date any more, _per se_. But, hey, there are other guys I work with who have… secrets. We find each other.” The smile slips, and Jensen mutters to himself, “Hold each other hostage, really.” His gaze snaps back to Jared’s, guarded, eyes searching his for a reaction.

“Oh, man.” Jared wants nothing more than to reach across the table and take Jensen’s hand in his.

It’s in that split second that he realizes that the game is over. Right here is Jared’s lottery ticket on a silver platter—what wouldn’t Sera, or any other editor, pay for this story?— and he’s never, ever going to cash it in.

They’re silent for a minute, then Jensen leans back, the smile on his face a more natural one. “But what about you? Guess you had a lot of catching up to do with your late start. You make a lot of guys lucky here in Rome?”

Jared’s head is still spinning, so it takes him a second to process what Jensen’s saying.

“Um, what? No. Not—not so much, actually.” He bites his lip and shrugs. “Turns out dating’s a lot harder than it looks, even when you think you’ve finally got things figured out.”

“Maybe especially when you’ve finally got things figured out?”

“Maybe.”

Jensen takes another sip of wine, says into his glass, “Sounds like more of your commitment issues, man. Still holding off on living that real life?”

“Maybe,” Jared replies again, words fighting their way out of him. “Maybe it’s the opposite. I think now that I’ve finally figured out what it is I want to commit to, relationship-wise, I’m committed to finding the right guy.”

He tosses back the last of his own wine and gets up to clear the table.

***

 

"Dancing?" Jared's says in disbelief. "You want to go dancing."

Jensen announces that the two of them are going out to a club while they’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the sink doing the dishes, Jensen scrubbing pots with the biggest Cheshire grin on his face after breaking the earlier tension by insisting that he’s a most excellent pot-washer. Every time Jared makes an assumption about Jensen Ackles—global movie-star recluse—his own Jensen turns around and stuns him by being unexpectedly… goofy.

"Well, if you want, dancing it is," Jared continues, "but I've got to warn you I'm all left feet."

Jensen laughs. "I guess I’ll be the judge of that. And," he says, letting a hint of mischief into his eyes, "if you're that bad a dancer, I'll just go find the guy from the market who invited me to the club in the first place."

 _Oh,_ Jared thinks, almost dropping the plate he’s drying. Maybe Jensen’s looking to hook up with this guy. He just told Jared that he doesn’t get the chance when he might be recognized; maybe he’s making the most of this opportunity. He has been all about getting wishes fulfilled today. Jared’s pretty sure it’s going to suck playing wingman, but Jensen’s so excited, he does his best to hide it.

After everything from dinner is cleaned up and put away, Jensen changes back into the clothes, since dry, that he bought at Giacomo’s, then badgers Jared into tidying up the rest of the apartment, too, before they go. Once Jensen’s satisfied with the state of affairs—and Jared adds “neat freak” to the list of things he’s learned about Jensen today—they set out for the club listed on the flyer.

It’s early yet for night life, so they walk all the way to Villa Borghese.

Jared’s wound up, itchy in his skin. He knows he’s acting strange, running off at the mouth, putting on a show, but he can’t settle. “Rome, Rome on the range…” he warbles as they walk along. “Where the deer and the antelope play…” Jensen laughs, though, joining in, “Where seldom is heard…” And the sound of Jensen’s voice joining his makes him feel as light and precarious as a balloon off of its string. “A discouraging word…”

He keeps singing silly songs and running away from the feeling that this outing may just be pushing their luck a bit too far; if there’s any place in the city Jensen’s likely to be recognized, it’s a dance club.

In the end, they arrive at their destination, Discoteca Art Café. It may be a weeknight, but there’s a decent crowd out front already.

Jared knows they're a good-looking couple of guys—“good-looking” being a colossal understatement when it comes to Jensen—so he’s not surprised when the bouncer at the door lets them in at the head of the line. Jared takes point, pushing his way through the crowd, tries to take up a lot more space and draw more attention than he usually does, hoping to allow Jensen to fade into the background a bit. As often happens, it strikes him how, as much as he loves Rome, he doesn’t fit here. His body doesn’t fit; it bumps through doors, towers above crowds, lurches through Roman life like some rude Polish peasant in a sea of Latin nobility. He's too bulky, too tall, too unkempt and open-faced. He looks over at Jensen, sees how he blends right in—pale skin and light eyes aside—with his newly-dark hair and perfect profile. Jared hopes it’s enough to keep him hidden.

As Jared continues to lead Jensen through the people hanging out along the edges of the club, he feels the throb of the music-- house-lite and dub-- pulse in his bones. The club is packed, the music isn’t horrible, and better yet, there’s a spot open right at the bar. He really needs a drink about now.

Jared has a bill in his hand, held out to grab attention as the bartenders dash around trying to fill orders as quickly as they can. “ _Cosa prendi?_ ” the woman shouts.

He looks over his shoulder to where Jensen’s pressed up against him by the surge of the club-goers. Jensen replies to the unspoken question with, “Shots?” A wicked grin plays across his face.

Jared turns back to the bartender. “ _Quattro shots di vodka, per favore._ ”

She arranges four shots in front of them, and Jensen announces solemnly, “When in Rome we shall do as the Romans, when in Hell we do shots at the bar.”

Jared simply says, “Down your neck!” and they both pick up a glass in each hand, draining one and then the other.

The liquor hits him low in the gut, warm and spreading slow to replace the buzz of wine he lost on the walk over. He watches Jensen, glowing under the multicolored lights, striking features thrown into high relief, but somehow making him look less like his famous persona.

“Hey, you lush! Isn’t this how you got in trouble last night?” Jared shouts into Jensen’s ear.

“Last night was the best night of my _life_!” Jensen shoots back, incomprehensibly. “Find me if you want!” he yells and then Jensen’s wading through the crowd onto the middle of the dance floor.

Jensen melts right in, looks good out there, looks like he fits in with this glamorous crowd with their tight-fitting or barely-there clothes. Jensen’s not dressed for clubbing—button-down too casual, outfit too bland—but his black slacks cling to his hips and ass during the flashes of space Jared can see through, and he moves gracefully, but not over-obvious, his slight swivel and sway blending perfectly with the other dancers. It makes Jared’s breath catch just to watch him. He goes to take out his phone once more, but then recalls that there’s no point to collecting pictures any longer, so he simply leaves it in his pocket.

Jared turns and orders himself another shot; the taste flows across the roof of his mouth and over his tongue, bright and icy. The ice turns to heat in the middle of his chest, and Jared finds the warmth of it dissolves some of the lump in his stomach. He admits to himself this whole day has been an illusion. Jensen is neither a spoiled celebrity ripe for deceiving, nor is he Jared’s soulmate. Tomorrow he’ll be gone, back to his acting and his life in Hollywood, and Jared will be back to… whatever this is he’s pretending to do.

He squares his shoulders, sharply aware of the tight fit of his shirt, the sweat matting the hair at his temples, how heavy his hands feel at his sides.

He goes to seek out Jensen out on the dance floor.

It doesn’t take Jared long to find him. The crowd has its ebbs and flows, a few girls and guys circling around Jensen. Jensen seems amused, notices them but doesn’t encourage them, too caught up in the music. Then a random girl comes up, presses up against Jensen’s back, puts her hands on Jensen’s hips.

Earlier today Jared would’ve denied that it was jealousy that sweeps through him in a poisonous rush. But now he admits it for what it is, and decides that, for what it’s worth, Jensen’s _his_ , even if only as a friend, even if only for the rest of tonight. He steps in between Jensen and the girl, boxing out, twice her size, a sidelong look of warning to the interloper. The girl backs off, and Jared immediately steps away from Jensen, giving him room.

“Thanks,” Jensen shouts, and steps forward to re-close the space between them, matching his movements to Jared’s. He leans forward, his breath hot in Jared’s ear. "I can't thank you enough." Jared stiffens at the comment, but keeps trying to concentrate on the music, trying to reassert at least a little room between himself and Jensen. "You’ve spent the whole day doing things I wanted to. Why?"

Jared pulls back, and looks into Jensen’s unsuspecting eyes. He holds his own steady, hoping that Jensen can’t read his discomfort in the shifting, flashing light of the dance floor. It feels like a thousand horrible lies have built him up that he wants to tear down, and this is as good an opening as he’s going to get. But even though he knows he should come clean, he also knows Jensen will be gone in a few hours at most. Jared will never allow what they’ve exchanged today hurt him, so what’s the point of ruining it all now?

"It seemed like the thing to do," Jared responds, trying out a smile.

Jensen looks like he’s about to say more, but a voice interrupts.

"May I cut in?"

Against the odds, it’s the boy from the market, the one who told Jensen about the club. Jensen looks to Jared, as if for permission, and Jared’s torn between the jealousy he felt just a minute before and remorse for treating Jensen as he has. He backs away and lets the boy slip forward, opposite Jensen.

Jared doesn’t go far, however, just to the edge of the main floor. He puts his back against a nearby wall and keeps watch. After a few minutes, another man approaches Jensen, this one a little older, shabbier.

He sees the man lean close to Jensen’s ear, then Jensen’s eyes widen, shaking his head sharply. Jared figures Jensen’s getting propositioned—no shock there, everyone in the club must be fantasizing about him by now—but alarm bells start going off when the guy takes Jensen by the elbow and tries to move him in the direction of the back corner of the dance floor.

Jared rushes back onto the floor, pushing his way ruthlessly through the crowd, and when he hears the name “Jensen Ackles?” form a question on someone’s lips, and then someone else’s, he surges forward even faster.

Jensen’s been worked into a corner but he’s still trying to play it cool, brush the guy off without making a scene. It’s clearly not working, though, and the asshole still has his hands on Jensen, so Jared closes in fast and grabs Jensen’s harasser by the shoulder, spinning him around and planting his fist right across his jaw. _Damn, that feels good._

The guy falls into a nearby group of couples grinding away, breaking them all apart and resulting in shouts and curses, pushing and shoving. Suddenly the dance floor is a melee, a battlefield of fists flying and girls’ high-pitched shrieks.

Jensen’s holding Jared back by the biceps, as if he’s afraid Jared’s going to jump in and start whaling on random people. But as interesting as a bar fight might sound in theory, in practice-- Jared knows from experience-- it’s a big mess. Plus, if there’s even a rumor of Jensen Ackles’ presence in the club, Jared needs to smuggle Jensen out of there right the fuck now, or risk an even more up-close and personal mob scene.

Over the tumult, Jensen shouts up to him, “Real smooth, cowboy!”

Jared yells back, “Shut up, I know. Let’s get out of here!”

He grabs Jensen by the wrist and pulls him to the back hall of the club, weaving quickly through the crowds around the restrooms and the couples hooking up in the dark and out the back exit.

After the club crowd, the pounding music, the flashing strobes, and the still-escalating fight, the silence of the alleyway is heavenly. They're alone out here, the door clicking closed behind them and both of them leaning against the worn brick of the wall, side-by-side, catching their breaths.

Jared turns his head. “You good?” he asks.

“Fine,” Jensen answers, mild as can be, like they’re in a formal drawing room. “And how are you?”

“Oh, fine, thank you!”

It’s not even funny, but they both break into a flood of laughter.

Jared wipes his eyes and recalls another rough brick wall, another moment where the two of them laughed. “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

“Yeah.” Jensen smirks. “Once more you’re my knight in shining armor.”

Jared watches as Jensen pushes himself off of the wall. Thinking he’s ready to leave, Jared’s not prepared when Jensen swings around and steps up into Jared’s body, cupping his cheek and pulling him down to kiss and lick and nip at Jared’s mouth, so unexpected that it makes his head swim. Jared’s immobilized; he wants to put his arms around Jensen, tug him hard up against his chest, run his hands all over Jensen’s body, but he doesn’t have the nerve. He can hardly believe this is actually happening, doesn’t do anything but open up to Jensen’s demanding mouth.

His lips part, allowing Jensen to plunge deep into him, tongue slick-sliding around Jared’s mouth, hurried, desperate, pulling back to catch Jared’s lip between his teeth then lapping the spike of pain away. The rush of feeling breaks Jared open, a surge of arousal speeding through his veins. All his doubts peel away, shredded, inconsequential.

His hands wind up in Jensen’s short hair, twisting and frantic, trying to drag him closer, breathing in through his nose, breathing in the scent of Jensen, the smell of sweat from dancing tangy and vivid. It’s astonishing, more intense than he’s ever felt before from just a kiss. It sends a jagged thrill down Jared’s spine, sensation bolting to his cock.

He feels Jensen fist his hand in Jared’s shirt over his hip, bunching it up, his thumb brushing the skin just above the waistband, and Jared moans at the way it sparks through him. Then Jensen pushes one leg between Jared's, and Jared can do nothing but arch into the pressure.

"Jesus. Please, just—" he stops, not sure what it is he's asking for.   

He’s dizzy with arousal, his skin burning hot and, man, he just wants. Wants to strip Jensen’s shirt off and lick his way across Jensen’s chest, pin Jensen up against the wall and memorize every inch of his skin, right here where anyone could see them.

Anyone could see them.

He feels Jensen’s hand on his belt buckle, feels Jensen start to slip downward, sliding along Jared’s body as if to go to his knees. And _holy shit_ , although Jared can barely remember his own name, he’s got presence of mind enough left to recognize that they’re out in the open behind a busy club in downtown Rome, and he’ll be damned if he lets Jensen get discovered like _this_.

It’s takes all the willpower Jared can muster to grip Jensen by the arm, pull him up and swing them around so that he’s shielding Jensen from the back entrance only a few meters away.

Jensen stills under his hands, lips swollen and glistening from kissing, and his eyes reveal a moment’s surprise and then hurt before he shutters them. Jared can’t handle that look right now.

He puts hands to either side of Jensen’s face and leans in to whisper, “No, no, stop.” Jensen jerks back and Jared swears, “Fuck. I mean, yes. Of course, yes! But not… not here.” He tilts his head to indicate the crowds strolling past on the sidewalk at the mouth of the alley.

“Not here,” Jared repeats, so turned on and eager and frustrated he wants to cry, sixty to zero in six seconds. But he can feel the danger, doesn’t want to consider what would happen to Jensen if someone found them, saw them, recognized Jensen and… and, fuck, took a picture.

“Would you come back to my apartment? God, please. Come home with me.”

Jensen looks at Jared, then around, eyes glazed, muzzy like he’s just woken up. Then he chuckles, it starts out small but after a moment he’s pressing his face into Jared’s chest, quaking with laughter. He shakes his head three or four times, rubbing into Jared’s shirt, and Jared could swear that Jensen was smelling it. When he looks up, his expression is one of the most beautiful things Jared’s ever seen.

“Man, let’s get out of here.”

They start walking, Jared again feels the urge to take Jensen’s hand, but resists. Discretion is the whole reason he’s not getting his cock sucked by Jensen Ackles _right now_. They make it about three blocks before they’re able to hail a cab. The ride to the apartment is short, but Jensen makes the most of it by teasing Jared, lightly running his fingers along the side of Jared’s thigh and sliding a hand up under his shirt. Jared hisses at him to stop, looking warily at the driver, but Jensen simply smirks.

By the time they reach his building, Jared is wound so tight he almost can't breathe, Jensen pressed right up against him as he fumbles with the key. Jensen has one hand on his hip and he nuzzles against Jared’s shirt in the space between his shoulder blades, and it’s reminiscent of last night. Was it only last night?  

"Open, goddamn it," Jared begs, praying for the key to turn, and then the lock clicks and he practically falls through the door, Jensen stumbling along after.

There’s not a moment between falling and being hauled up close against Jensen’s chest. Jensen doesn’t attack him, though, like he did in the alley. Simply brushes his mouth whisper-soft across Jared’s—tentative, asking. Jensen’s lips are so soft beneath his own, and Jared hears himself make the tiniest sound, a breathy, kind of quiet ‘yeah' in acknowledgement and then he leans in, kisses Jensen back. His tongue moves into Jensen’s mouth, slow and careful, as Jensen’s hands come to rest on his waist, holding him in place.

Jared can still taste the sting of liquor as Jensen slides his tongue around Jared’s mouth in return. His hand comes up to rest on the back of Jensen’s bare neck, thumb brushing the short hair behind Jensen’s ear, fingers cupping the curve of his skull, and he feels Jensen’s whole body shudder in response.

Jensen gets serious then, the deep caress of his tongue across Jared's palate and the back of his teeth, then sucking and nipping and teasing at his lower lip, kissing him relentlessly until Jared’s blazing, breathless, and stupid with it. His cock is throbbing, and he knows Jensen can feel it, hard and demanding against his hip. But Jensen also knows too much, and he pulls back when Jared fumbles for his fly.

He takes Jared’s face in his hands, looks him right in the eye. “Have you ever done this before?”

Jared’s breathing heavily, feels the heat rise in his cheeks, but doesn’t look away. “Of course! Kinda.”

“Yeah? What’s ‘kinda’ mean?” He brushes the pad of his thumb gently over Jared’s cheek.

“Only with girls?”

“Oh.”

“It’s just,” Jared clarifies, “you know, for so long I wasn’t sure, and then I wasn’t really out, and then, even after I moved here, well… I picked up or went on dates and there was messing around,” Jensen raises his eyebrows and Jared plows onward, “um, handjobs and blowjobs and all, but I never really felt comfortable bringing someone back here or going back to their place. And, well…” Jared trails off, looks down at where his fingers are nervously plucking at the waistband of Jensen’s pants, knowing he’s coming off about as sexy as a pimply fourteen-year-old.

“Oh,” Jensen repeats, eyes glittering, and kisses him again, body curving into Jared's. His hands shift their grip on Jared’s jaw, his thumbs pressing in, and Jared opens his mouth wider in response. Jensen’s tongue swipes over Jared's lips and between, and then he shifts one of his hands down to cup Jared’s ass, dragging him closer. Jared groans when he feels rigid heat against his thigh.

Jared pulls back. “What about you? With, um, with guys?”

“Me?” Jensen snorts. “Plenty. More than I’d like to admit.” He smiles self-deprecatingly, as much a grimace as a smile, and something about it makes Jared want to erase the look from his face forever. Those other guys were clearly not good for him. Jared sure as hell intends to be.

“Well, then,” Jared says, yanking Jensen’s collar aside and sucking hard at the juncture between neck and shoulder. He murmurs into Jensen’s skin, “You’re just going to have to show me what to do.”

Jensen moans, tilts his head to the side to give Jared better access, at the same time sliding his hands to Jared’s belt and fumbling with the metal. "Okay, okay, god. I’d really like to see you naked now. Is that okay?"

Jared manages to abandon that spot on Jensen’s neck long enough to let out a quiet, "Yeah, I think I'd like that.”

He wishes he sounded a little more certain, or something, but he's feeling a bit intimidated by the company he’s keeping. There’s a little voice in the back of his head that keeps whispering _this is Jensen Ackles’ neck… those are Jensen Ackles’ hands_ , and he hates it. Because he doesn’t give a shit about ‘Jensen Ackles,’ but this man in front of him? In his arms right now? This is who Jared wants with a pull like gravity.

Jensen grabs at the hem of Jared’s shirt at the same time Jared tugs at Jensen’s. They laugh, but it doesn’t break the tension, just feeds it, and Jared tears off his own shirt as Jensen sheds his. Bare chests pressed together, they shuffle the short distance toward the bed, Jensen unbuttoning Jared’s slacks, Jared biting, chafing his lips against the rough-stubbled angle of Jensen’s jaw.

Jensen breaks contact, because he finally gets Jared's zipper tugged down, and his eyes fix on his goal. He’s murmuring low and sweet, and every word is melting Jared’s brain.

"I know I'm rushing but…. Yeah. Your goddamn body. You make me so crazy. I just want to touch you everywhere. Figure out how to make you shake, make you cry out. Make you come all over the place. Come over and over, all night. Christ, Jared." Jensen curls his fingers around fabric and elastic and pushes the material down past Jared’s hips and thighs until it’s all pooled at his ankles. "And I think—" Jensen cuts off sharply.

"Jesus." He whispers, sounding a little like awe. He reaches out to run the pad of his finger along the underside of Jared's cock, long and stiff where it stands up against his belly.

Jared gasps, goes to surge forward, but Jensen lays a palm flat on his chest, stiff-arm, holding him back and in place. Jared can’t help squirming as Jensen brushes lightly up and down. He palms Jared’s balls and rolls them around firmly, and Jared can’t help the whimper that escapes him.

Jensen looks up and Jared can see his eyes are darker, wider, his cheeks flushed. It’s like some sex fantasy come to life, absurd, fantastic to see Jensen like this, be here with him. To hear his movie-star voice dip low, "So, tell me what you want."

“You,” Jared pants, almost out of his mind with want, standing there naked, Jensen’s hand still fondling between his legs. “I want you. Anything. Everything.”

“Alright.” Jensen’s voice shakes and he takes a deep breath. “Alright, you just say the word, and I’ll go down and blow your brains out and that will be awesome. But, just so you know,” Jensen releases Jared, lets him in close, takes Jared’s hand and places it on his goddamn perfect ass. “Even though I don’t usually catch,” he leans up and growls in Jared’s ear, “I’m dying for you to fuck me.”

Jared practically shoves Jensen down onto the bed, plastering himself against Jensen and plundering his mouth, feeling a roaring of blood in his ears. He knows Jensen’s trying to make this easy for him, but he also knows that the thought of being inside Jensen makes him _crazy_.

He lifts up and Jensen’s grinning at him. “Because I gotta tell you, the virgin thing? Total turn on.”

Jared slides off him and shoves at Jensen’s shoulder. “You’re an asshole.”

“Hey, be nice. Or you’re not getting a piece of this.” And he wriggles exaggeratedly as he shimmies out of his pants.

Jared stops laughing when Jensen rolls back over, finally naked now too, and starts to mouth his way down his body. Jared thinks he may’ve blacked out for a second or something because he has no clue how Jensen’s gotten there, but suddenly he’s straddling Jared’s legs, back bowed and rubbing his lips over the head of Jared's cock, licking the length of it firm and wet, and then gently, torturously sucking at the head.

Jared writhes, desperately trying not to plunge upward into Jensen’s mouth, sensation ripping through him. He concentrates on the feel of Jensen’s palms on his hipbones and the perfect glide and pressure of Jensen's mouth as he swallows Jared down. With no more than that, Jared feels his orgasm building, feels himself losing control, arching up, and he can’t believe he has presence of mind to get the name right as he gasps, “Je-Jason. I'm...”

Jensen quickly rears back, gripping Jared’s cock still and tight in his fist. “Nope, you’re not. You don’t come until you’re in me."

“Bastard,” Jared groans, his head thumping back into the pillow. He holds onto Jensen’s shoulders to ground himself, hold himself off, then his hands slide down to find Jensen’s sharp brown nipples and tease them to hardness. At the first touch, Jensen yelps and _thrashes_ , which helps Jared ignore his own urgency for a minute and give Jensen a bit of payback.

Jared grins and begins to play, fingers circling and nails scraping over sensitive skin, rolling one stiff nipple firmly between thumb and forefinger, brushing back and forth lightly over the other, until Jensen is twitching and grinding down onto his legs hard enough to hurt.  Jared murmurs, "You like that, huh?"

Jensen just digs his fingers into Jared’s chest, eyes squeezed shut. “Ahhh, fuck, your hands. I’ve been fantasizing about your hands all day.”

“Yeah?” Jared strokes one palm down Jensen’s back, pulling him closer up, so he can briefly dip his finger down into the cleft of Jensen’s ass, then out again.

Jensen looks down at him, desperate. “Tell me you’re ready for this, tell me that you’ve watched gay porn at least.”

Jared huffs indignantly. “Of course I watch porn! I may be a ‘virgin,’ but I’m not a monk.”

“Then find me some lube and let’s get this show on the road.”

Despite his bold talk, Jared’s stomach flutters a bit with renewed nervousness, and he jerks his chin to indicate the side table. Jensen reaches over to slide open the drawer. Of course, Jared forgot that—alongside the optimistic but as yet unused condoms and slick—there’s a dildo in there, a gag gift from Mike and Chad for Jared’s last birthday, tiny and bright pink with little raised hearts all over it. Jensen holds it up with a priceless look on his face, then tosses it back in the drawer and pulls out the other supplies. He hauls Jared up to sitting and settles himself over his thighs again, face-to-face now, squeezing a cool splotch of lube out into Jared’s hand.

"You’ll tell me," Jared asks softly, as he reaches between Jensen’s legs, past his balls, and tentatively circles Jensen’s opening with one lube-slick finger, "if I do something you don't like?"

A shudder runs through Jensen at the touch. "Sure. But I don't think..." Jensen gasps and spreads his thighs a bit wider, "…don’t think that’s gonna be a problem."

Jared watches Jensen’s face as he slowly presses up, breaching him, the tip of Jared’s index finger barely penetrating him, in and out and Jensen’s so fucking hot inside. Jared slips further in, coasting his other hand up Jensen’s body to gently play with his nipple again, the simultaneous firm push inside and the soft brush with the pad of Jared’s thumb making Jensen’s breath come quick and harsh. Jared brings another finger to bear, thrusts both deep, searching for a place inside Jensen that might make him thrill.

He lowers his forehead to Jensen’s shoulder, closing his eyes, determined to be patient. He thinks about the times he’s fingered himself in the shower, what worked and what didn’t. He carefully eases Jensen open, reveling in every tremor and quiver, feeling Jensen’s muscles start to give and relax, feeling the moment he thinks maybe discomfort turns to pleasure and Jensen arches into his touch. He licks out, tasting the warm damp skin along Jensen’s collarbone.

“Condom.” Jensen gasps into his ear. “Put it on.”

Jared lifts his head to look him in the eye. “I’m clean, I—"

“But you don’t know if I am, so hurry up and get rolling. Before I take care of this myself.” Jensen reaches between them to seize hold of his own cock, the head glistening with pre-come, and strokes slowly. Jared can’t look away.

It takes a second for it to sink in that Jensen’s trying to look out for him—wants Jared to be safe, mentoring him or something like—and the sweetness of that thought blunts the sharp edge of his urgency, warming him inside.

He lifts Jensen up, off of straddling Jared’s thighs, and manhandles him onto his hands and knees. Jensen’s just going with whatever Jared wants to do with him, which. _God fucking damn._

He has to tear the condom packet cautiously with his teeth, fingers too slick, and he rolls it on adding a generous dollop of more lube, hands shaking just a bit. Jensen twists at the waist to watch, avid, over his shoulder as Jared preps himself, not moving from where Jared set him. Jared slides into the empty space made for him between Jensen’s legs, and places a hand on Jensen’s sweat-sheened skin, stroking down the perfect dip of spine until he reaches the end, pushing gently down against the small of Jensen’s back to make him arch and open.

He hesitates there, feels the start of panic, as he thinks about everything that could go wrong right now. He could suck at this, fuck it all up. He’ll probably come too soon, Jensen not come at all. Worse, he could _hurt_ Jensen, which at this moment right here, heart so full and head so empty, is something he’d rather cut off his own hands than do.

“Jared,” Jensen says, strained. “C’mon, man. Nothing to it. C’mon and fuck me.” He reaches back, scrabbles at the side of Jared’s thigh and tugs him closer.

So Jared lines up and presses the head of his cock up against Jensen’s hole, a gentle nudge forward until Jensen stretches and opens and Jared’s just barely inside. He’s quaking, aching, the need to thrust warring with his uncertainty. But Jensen takes things out of Jared’s hands by rearing back without warning, forcing Jared’s cock deep in one long plunge, the grip so tight and hot that a broken cry flies up out of Jared’s throat.

Jared tries to pull back because there’s no chance he’s going to fit all the way, but Jensen gets his knees under him and keeps pushing then dragging back, working himself onto Jared’s cock bit by bit, taking Jared in farther each time, a gorgeous slow flex of muscles. Being inside Jensen is so much, too much and the noise Jensen makes when Jared finally bottoms out, fills him up, makes Jared want to burst out of his own skin.

They’re both still for a long moment, Jared holding onto Jensen’s hips for dear life. Then he reaches out with his left hand and skates his palm up Jensen’s back, over his shoulder blades, into his hair, feeling the soft stubble slip through his fingers.

“That’s right,” Jensen slurs, voice like whiskey, “that’s it. God, yeah. Let’s do this.”

Jared pulls almost all the way out and glides back in, the way easier now. He bites down into his lip, forces himself to ignore the insane rush of feeling, tries to let his body go on autopilot as he moves. He needs to focus on the tension in Jensen’s shoulders, concentrate on searching for just the right angle to his thrusts. He nudges Jensen’s thighs a bit further apart. He has to get Jensen there.

Then he discovers the right spot, knows it from the way Jensen bucks up and gasps. Now that he’s found it, Jared’s confidence mounts— excited, then triumphant, fevered and soaring. He works inside Jensen with a series of long, quick thrusts, again, again, there, _so good_ , the sound of skin slapping and their grunts and pants of breath filling up the room. He doesn’t know anything except movement, and friction, and sweat, heat, and fucking. Jensen’s writhing and growling under him and Jared runs his hand up Jensen’s body, feverishly stroking ribs, pecs, belly, chasing those sounds.

"Christ, yes. You’re so fucking _deep_." Jensen braces a hand on the wall, so he can slam back into Jared as the pace grows harder and faster. "Don't stop. Keep— Now touch me. Touch me, please.”

Jared’s trying to hold off, but he’s reeling, unbridled, his orgasm pooling at the base of his spine and thrumming out in every direction. He reaches around for Jensen’s cock, wraps his hand around the sleek, heavy weight of it and feels Jensen jerk at the touch. Pulse racing, too far gone to be clever, Jared hastily twists his wrist and strokes his thumb over and around the head of Jensen’s dick.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Jensen chokes, and Jared feels him thicken, harden impossibly, and then he crashes back against Jared, impaling himself once more before throwing his head back with a shout, blurts of come pumping all over Jared’s palm and fingers and onto the bedding.

Jared feels Jensen’s muscles quiver and clench around the length of his cock and it’s too much, it sends him plunging over the edge, and in three, four quick snaps of his hips he's coming, blaze of white behind his eyelids, spilling into the condom, into Jensen.

Jared’s muscles lock, and he’s shuddering, panting, thinking he might pass out from the dizzy pleasure spiraling through every limb, while below him Jensen’s slowly collapsing down onto the bed. He clings to the glow of euphoria, wants to capture this astonishing moment somehow, this unexpected fortune.

It takes them both another minute to catch their breaths, then Jared gingerly pulls out and strips off the condom. He rolls out of bed, legs noodled and shaky, to wet a warm washcloth for clean-up. Within the sterile darkness of the bathroom, he slowly comes back to himself, thoughts swirling into the vacuum of his mind, wondering how he got here, how it’s possible that Jensen could’ve given this to him, what happens now.

He brings the washcloth to the bedside and diffidently holds it out to Jensen, who takes it, stretching and sighing. Jared hesitates. What does Jensen expect? Should Jared get back in the bed? Sleep on the couch again?

Jensen balls up the used washcloth and adroitly flips it onto the bathroom floor. Then he reaches out to straighten the sheet and blanket, holding them up to invite Jared inside.

“What are you waiting for?”

Jared slides in under the covers and curls up onto his right side. It’s only an under-sized queen and they’re two really big guys, so Jared scoots to the edge of the mattress, leaving Jensen as much room as possible. But he feels Jensen press up along his back, one arm tucking around Jared’s middle, his hips snug up against Jared’s bare ass.

Jared stiffens. “What are you doing?”

Jensen says, “Some people call it cuddling, but I call it huddling for warmth. It’s a survival instinct.” He shifts up onto one elbow, staring down at Jared for a moment, one hand reaching out to sweep Jared's hair away from his face. Then Jensen flops back down, full-body contact.

Jared can’t remember if he’s ever… cuddled with a guy before. Girls, yes, lots of times. But Jensen, even though he’s not quite as large as Jared, isn’t petite or soft. He’s broad and solid and the arm around Jared is a strong band around his waist. Jared hadn’t even realized how much he missed this kind of closeness, so he simply lets go, melts back into Jensen. He feels Jensen’s soft cock press forward, two or three times, tiny, gentle movements.

“Are you trying to start up again?” Jared mumbles.

“Maybe. Maybe I’m curious if that first-time was a fluke.” Jensen settles even closer, too, nuzzling at the back of Jared’s neck. “Maybe I just think you taste good. Midnight snack.”

Jared tucks one foot behind Jensen’s calf, drawing them together at every point, the mattress bowing slightly to create a little valley for them in the middle. “Damn, man. And you say that I’m always hungry.”

Jensen chuckles into the curls along Jared’s neck and Jared falls asleep to the even rise and fall of Jensen’s chest flush against his back.

***

He wakes in the dark to find Jensen dressed, putting on his shoes.

“Whatcha doin’?” Jared sits up and runs his hands through his hair, trying to smooth out the tangled bedhead. And then his brain catches up with his mouth and he realizes.

Jensen doesn’t answer, just stands slowly and heads toward the door, banging his shin against the leg of a chair.

“How long are you in Rome?” Jared asks, trying for casual, and now he’s simply embarrassing himself, but he can’t seem to shut up. If you’d promised Jared two days ago that he’d get a night of smoking-hot sex with the universally acknowledged most handsome man on the planet, he’d’ve been ecstatic. At the moment, though, staring at the broad, tense span of Jensen’s back and shoulders, a one-night stand doesn’t seem like such a gift.

Jensen turns around. It’s dark in the apartment, the only light the silvered-constant of moonlight bleeding in through the slats of the blinds. Jared probably should be just as glad he can’t see Jensen’s face clearly.

“Um—,” Jensen starts, but doesn’t continue.

“Never mind,” Jared jumps in. “I was—that was—No look, thanks for a great time. Really.”

Jensen ducks his head, doing that rubbing thing on the back of his neck that Jared loves so much. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

Jared’s sitting naked in bed with the sheet clutched around his waist and he feels like a fucking moron. Should he get up? Walk Jensen to the door? Kiss him goodbye? He’s completely floundering now. All of the simple ease between them from yesterday, Jared reaches for it, but it’s gone.

Jared looks down and picks at a loose thread on the hem of the sheet. His chin jerks up when he feels the bed dip, and there’s Jensen, perched on the far corner.

“I don’t—it seems like I’m always that guy who sneaks out in the middle of the night. I don’t want to be, but I am.” He scrubs a hand across his face, touching his fingers to the scab along his brow, “Jared, man, I’m just so fucking messed up. I’m not what you think, who you think. My career… my work… there’s just no way to—"

And something grips Jared’s heart and twists, because he _knows_ this, he knows exactly how constrained Jensen is. Shit, Jared is part of the system that perpetuates the Hollywood leading-man stereotypes and forces guys like Jensen to stay in the closet.

And he feels like it means something that Jensen is trying to give him an explanation.

“I get it,” he tells Jensen, putting all the sincerity and concern in his voice that he can. “Really.”

“Yeah? Well, I wish I did.” Jensen smiles wryly. “It’s uh… it’s usually a whole lot easier to walk away.” The room is too dim to tell whether Jensen’s blushing, but Jared thinks he is.

He grins. “I thought you big Hollywood movie stars always know how to make a smooth exit.”

“What?”

Jared freezes, can’t move a muscle. Maybe if he’s still enough, time will stop, maybe run backward and those words will never be said. The dreadful silence is one long held breath.

“You… you knew?” It comes out choked out like tires on gravel. “All the time. You knew.”

Jared bites the inside of his lip, a sharp sting to combat the sick, oozing roil in his gut. He doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t have to.

“What was all this? Some kind of joke? A… a conquest? So you can go on TMZ or the internet and boast about sleeping with the infamous _gay_ Jensen Ackles?” He stands up, looks wildly around the room. “Maybe you set up a video camera, make yourself a nice chunk of change with a sex tape?”

“No!” Jared’s shaking his head violently, goes to stand, too, but realizes he’s still naked and stays on the bed. “God, no, it’s not like that at—"

“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up.” The blade of Jensen’s hand slices through the air, cutting Jared off, cutting into him. “You’ve been lying to me since the minute we met!”

He knew there would be fallout if Jensen learned the truth, he knew it; he just didn’t expect it to hurt so fucking much. There’s a razor-barbed lump in his throat, and it makes his eyes prick and burn. “Oh, like you’ve been such a paragon of honesty today, _Jason_. Those Oscars? Wow, well deserved.” Jared spits it out, guilt turning to poison. Hey, if this is ending badly, might as well set fire to the whole damn thing.

Jensen turns away so Jared can’t see his face. “God. I’m such an idiot,” he mutters.

“Join the club.”

“I thought… I was so stupid to think someone would want me, just me, not the fame.”

And if Jared had thought his heart was breaking before, it’s nothing to the bright jolt of pain that hits him now.

“No,” he says. “Don’t say that. Don’t think that. Please don’t. It’s exactly the opposite. I didn’t even recognize you at first. Not until this morning. And then I only—" And he was going to say ‘fell in love with you,’ but he realizes that he forfeited the right to say that with the very first words out of his mouth. “—I only slept with you because I got to know the _real_ you.”

Neither of them moves for a long time, Jensen staring at the wall and Jared staring at his own hands clutched in the sheets. Then Jared hears Jensen get up, a fumbling at the knob and the creak of the door.

Jared’s head snaps up. “Jensen.”

Jensen flinches like he’s been slapped, and Jared realizes it’s the first time he’s called him by that name. “Wait. It’s the middle of the night and you don’t know how to get back to the hotel. I'll drive you.”

“No. Just give me money for a cab.”

God, Jared thinks, it must kill him to say that. “You’ll never find a cab in Rome at 5 a.m.” He flashes back to Jensen getting mugged, blood running over his face. _Jesus, was that just yesterday?_ Jared pitches his voice soft, beseeching. “Please, please, just let me drive you.”

Jensen hesitates, then gives a curt nod and stalks outside.

Leaping up, Jared grabs the first clothes that come to hand, which just happen to be the sweats he’d loaned Jensen. He slides his feet into some flipflops and snags a set of keys from a hook by the door.

Jared lives in one of those rare, precious neighborhoods with free parking on the street and Chad does not, so Jared keeps Chad’s vintage little Autobianchi for him, moving it occasionally to avoid tickets and keeping the tank full in case of emergencies. This can be considered nothing less than an emergency.

He unlocks the doors and Jensen squeezes into the passenger seat, wordless, face hard and blank. Jared sees him wince and shift, probably more than a little sore, and it’s a punch to the gut for Jared to think about how much he’s lost in just the space of a few minutes.

The sky to the east is brightening and the stars fading. They make the ride in silence. Jared can feel Jensen snatching quick looks at him, but he keeps his own eyes on the road. What if he just kept driving, didn’t go to the hotel, just… _drove_ , out of the city, out into the countryside, up the peninsula, maybe turn east where the continents would stretch out before them? Drive and drive and never halt. Where would be far enough?

“Stop here.”

Jared turns onto a small side street around the corner from Jensen’s hotel and pulls the car up to the curb. He wonders what Jensen thinks of the fact that Jared didn’t need directions.

“Jensen, please.” His voice isn’t as steady as he’d like. He wants to sound reasonable, to distance himself from the image of manipulative sociopath Jensen must now have of him. Of course, if he really wanted that, he’d shut up and get out of Jensen’s life, but he can’t stop himself from asking for another chance. “Don’t go.”

“I have to. Don’t you see? I’m trapped inside the celebrity. I mean, look at you, Jared. You’re not a liar. And yet, all you’ve done is lie to me, all because of who I am.”

“It’s not—it wasn’t all lies. It was… only one.” His throat clogs with explanations.

“I thought, maybe, just this time—” Jensen stares out his window for a minute, two. Jared clutches the wheel with both hands until his fingers ache. Jensen shakes his head, still not looking at Jared, and says, “I have to go now. Don’t try to stop me. Don’t even watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me, like I’m leaving you.”

He slips out of the car and strides quickly down the sidewalk. Jared finds himself gripping the door handle. He doesn’t breathe; he doesn’t blink. He tells himself that he’ll get out, chase Jensen down, if he looks back.

Just once.

He doesn’t.

***

The next morning, Jared arrives at the rescheduled press conference right on time.

Of course, Jensen and the rest of the movie’s cast are staying at the Hassler, the five-star luxury hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps. Jared’s been to interviews here dozens of times, it being one of the prime see-and-be-seen locations of the music, film, and sports high-fliers. Only the finest for Jensen, obviously, with its walls decorated with original paintings by Titian and Tintoretto schools and the bathrooms finished in precious Italian marble and 23-carat gold plated faucets.

Jared flashes his press credentials and heads into the Sala Sistina conference room. The room is overblown opulence, red walls and gilt, an ornate, unlit fireplace gracing the back wall. The rows of chairs set up for the audience that typically would be metal foldouts are sleek, dark wood and cushioned. Up front is a long table draped in faux-silk where the director and cast will sit on display to field the audience’s questions.

There’s a substantial crowd of press. Not surprising, given that the buzz around _Storm Surge_ has been getting louder for months. He sees Chad and Sandy up near the front, but the thought of sitting next to them, having to make small talk, maybe get asked about what he did yesterday, makes his stomach turn. Instead, he slips unseen into a seat on the aisle a few rows behind them.

The low rumble of conversation silences as a little door at the side of the room opens, and the director and cast are escorted in.

Jared starts at the collective gasp that goes up when the press corps sees Jensen’s short hair. Jared realizes that he'd forgotten. He’d forgotten movie-star Jensen and his trademark hair.

A firestorm of flashes erupts and the room echoes with the click and whir of cameras and phones and questions shouted at Jensen out-of-turn. The publicist in charge of the event raises her hands to plead for quiet but finally gives in and just starts picking hands out of the air.

It takes a full twenty minutes for the press to get the obsession with Jensen’s haircut and the bruises on his face out of the way. But after the fifth straight verbatim answer of “I felt it was time for a change” and “I slipped in the shower,” the reporters finally allow the rest of the cast to join in. Jared admires Jensen’s aplomb, the way he deflects questions in a way that no longer comes across to Jared as fake or aloof, but just a justifiable technique in defense of privacy. But he also notices small signs of tension leaking out of Jensen—shoulders up, left thumb cracking the knuckles of his fingers.

Half an hour spins into an hour and, finally, Jared realizes he can’t wait any longer. The conference is almost over. If he’s going to do something, it has to be now.

He stands up.

Jensen goes completely still as he takes in Jared’s presence, the press pass hanging on the lanyard around Jared’s neck.

Jared speaks softly into the mic brought over by one of the panel attendants. “Jared Padalecki, _OK Italy_ Magazine. This question is for Jensen. My readers want to know: how critical is the role of trust in your work?”

Jensen answers smoothly, not a hitch in his voice or twitch of a muscle in his face to give anything away. He stares straight into Jared.

“Trust? It’s the single most important thing in the world. To me. I can’t function without it.” There’s a slight pause, then he breaks eye contact to look at his colleagues. “Luckily, Steven’s put together a cast that makes it easy to feel…”

Jared tunes out the rest of the stock answer, sitting back down and pretending to take notes. Once Jensen finishes and the questions move to a different panelist, Jared pulls out his phone and hits Send.

He sees Jensen startle and dig into his back pocket for his own phone. Jared was banking on the fact that, after the events of yesterday, Jensen would be certain to keep it with him at all times.

Jensen opens up the text message and Jared knows what he’s reading:

 _I’m sorry. These are for you…_ and attached to the text are each of the clandestine pictures from the day before.

Everything and everyone else in the room fades into the background as Jared stares at Jensen while Jensen stares at his phone. It’s an endless moment, at least it seems so to Jared, until Jensen looks up at him, finds Jared unerringly. His features, as always, give nothing away.

Is there such a thing as coincidence? Jared wonders, eyes locked with Jensen’s, drinking him in. If Jensen had wandered along a different route that night, if Jared had lingered half an hour longer at Sandy and Genevieve’s, if those punks had chosen a different target, if Jared had looked the other way—if any number of things had happened, they would never have met. And if Jared had not recognized Jensen and found himself desperate for the interview money, or if Jensen had not been so eager to play hooky in Rome and been so trusting of Jared—then they would have met, spoken, and gone on their way into separate lives.

And yet, all of those _ifs_ had converged. He will not believe in coincidence. Even though it’s all come down, in the end, to nothing.

He wants to regret it. Regret the lying and the pain he’s caused Jensen, regret ever meeting him or discovering what he’s really like under those shields. But he doesn’t. Maybe someday, but not now.

Jared gets up and makes his way down the aisle between rows of seats toward the back of the room.

It’s a long walk, and although the press conference is still going on, the sound of his own footsteps ringing on the terrazzo floor sounds loud in his ears. It’s as if he’s in one of those dreams where you walk and walk toward a destination, but it never comes any closer. But finally, inevitably, Jared reaches the exit. He stops, holds out his phone over a trash bin next to the doorway, and drops it in.

He strides out of the room, never once looking back.

 __

***

It’s October and Jared’s headed home from class, his backpack stuffed with schoolwork slung over one shoulder, his hands full of grocery bags from a quick stop at the market on the corner. The leaves in Ann Arbor have turned to bronze and gold and bright orange; the canopy of trees lining the sidewalk is thick enough and the date late enough that they drift down on him in a constant fall, snagging in his hair and clothes. He’s got about two hours before he has to be at work— a seven-to-two late shift at The Fleetwood— and he’s calculating whether he has time to catch a nap.

He strolls down the hill toward his off-campus rental, the smallest house on the street, but still six times bigger than his place in Rome. The light is at that severe angle it gets in autumn, sun setting directly into Jared’s eyes, so he’s blinded until he turns onto his front walk. There he finds someone waiting on the porch: Texas A&M sweatshirt, Cowboys baseball cap.

He pulls up, stunned, stands there feeling like he might fall down.

“Can I come in?”

Jared thinks of all the things he could say—questions, apologies, recriminations, declarations—things that might come spewing out, like some printer gone haywire, reams and reams that would overrun the porch and spill out onto the leaf-covered lawn.

Instead he simply transfers the groceries all to one hand, unlocks the door and walks in, leaving it open for Jensen to follow.

The living room is sparsely furnished, neat as a pin. A beat-up old sectional couch with steel-gray cushions dominates one corner and there’s a massive oak desk facing the opposite wall, laptop closed and pens in cup. In the awkward silence between them, Jensen wanders around the room. He runs a finger along the top of the single frame on the desk, a picture that sits next to a row of old bound books and precisely stacked papers. It’s a close-up of Jensen himself on the Sant'Agnese church terrace, gazing out over the city, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, sun in his hair.

“You kept one.”

It’s as if a door’s been opened and words rush out of Jared. “Jensen, I’m sorry. I never got the chance to say it before, last spring, but I’m so, so sorry. I should never have tried to trick you in the first place, but even more, once I realized how I— that we—I should have told you the truth. You had—have— every right to be angry at me.”

Jensen picks up the picture, holding it in both hands, staring down at it.

Finally, he says, “Yeah. I was angry for a week, maybe two.” He sets the picture gently back into place and turns. “But you know what I started thinking about? That first night. You didn’t know who the hell I was, but you still stopped when I was in trouble, took on those muggers, took me back to your apartment and fixed me up, gave me a place to sleep, gave me your _clothes_. You did that, Jared. That’s the guy I fell for.”

Jared doesn’t know how to respond, but he doesn’t have to because Jensen keeps going.

“I thought about you, you know. We were together for one damned day and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, all the time. I _dreamed_ about you. But by the time I figured out I wasn’t mad anymore, or that being mad wasn’t as important as seeing you again… you’d disappeared. I flew all the way to Rome just to go back to your apartment to find you and you were… gone.” Jensen rubs the back of his neck, and the familiarity of the gesture makes Jared’s heart hitch. “Took me awhile to track you down, and then I was on location, but now--”

Jensen trails off and just shrugs, looking at Jared, mouth pressed in a tight line.

Jared feels like he’s been dropped out of a plane. He wants to say something flippant to break the fall, ground himself.But the words stick in his throat at the raw emotion on Jensen’s face. All he can force out is, “Jensen.”

Jensen steps closer, looks up into Jared’s face. “Tell me you’re not seeing anybody.”

“I’m not seeing anybody.”

“How can that be? When you’re so—" Jensen gestures at Jared, looking him up and down, both hands out like they hold everything.

Jared laughs a little, surprised, pleased, heat and hope percolating up. His heart pounds so loud he thinks Jensen must hear the thump-thump of it ring in his ears. “I guess no one can compare to the World’s Sexiest Man of 2009.”

Jensen smiles then, too, and places his hands on Jared’s shoulders, thumbs resting warm on his neck just above the collar of his tee. “So you’re saying I’ve spoiled you for all other guys?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Good.” Jensen reaches up to brush Jared’s hair away from his face. “Good.”

An hour or so later, Jared calls his boss to tell her that he’s not going to make it to work that evening.

Then he turns off the phone.


End file.
